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THE  EVOLUTION  OF 
POLITICAL  THOUGHT 


Also  by  C.  Northcote  Parkinson 

Parkinson's  Law 
AND  Other  Studies  in  Administration 


The 

Evolution  of 

Political  Thought 

by 
C.  Northcote  Parkinson 

RAFFLES  PROFESSOR  OF  HISTORY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  MALAYA 


HOUGHTON     MIFFLIN     COMPANY     *     BOSTON 


uiV^ 


Copyright  ©  1958  by  C.  Northcote  Parkinson 

All  rights  reserved  including  the  right  to 
reproduce  this  book  or  parts  thereof  in  any  form 

Library  of  Congress  Catalog  Card  Number:  58-1 1710 

SECOND     PRINTING 

CAMBRIDGE       •       MASSACHUSETTS 
PRINTED  IN  THE  U.S.A. 


/ 


CONTENTS 

Preface     ........  7 

Introduction — Primitive  Man  .         .         .         .         17 


Part  I 
MONARCHY 

T.     Monarchy  among  Agricultural  Peoples  .         .  28 

II.     Monarchy  among  Pastoral  Peoples  ...  39 

III.  The  Implications  of  War  .....  45 

IV.  Monarchy  and  Nationalism       ....  53 
V.     Monarchy  justified  by  Divine  Right         .         .  74 

VI.     Monarchy  justified  by  Expedience    ...  82 


Part  II 
OLIGARCHY 

VII.  Feudalism  ........        92 

VIII.  Aristocracy 102 

IX.  Aristocracy  justified  in  Theory        .         .         .110 

X.  Theocracy  .......       121 

XI.  Theocracy  justified  in  Theory  ....       142 

XII.  The  Theocracy  of  Communism  .         .         .         .151 


6  CONTENTS 

Part  III 
DEMOCRACY 

XIII.  The  Origins  of  Democracy        .         .         .         .168 

XIV.  Democracy  at  Rome 181 

XV.     Democracy  justified  by  Religion       .         .         .188 

XVI.     Democracy  justified  by  Reason         .         .         .199 

XVII.     Democracy  justified  by  Utility         .         .         .       209 

XVIII.     Democracy  carried  to  its  Logical  Conclusion       224 

Part  IV 
DICTATORSHIP 

XIX.     Democracy  in  Decline       .....       238 

XX.     The  Caudillos  .         .         .         .         .         .         .251 

XXI.     Twentieth  Century  Dictatorship      .         .         .       260 

XXII.  The  Theory  of  Dictatorship     .         .         .         .271 

XXIII.  Dictatorship  in  Decay 285 

XXIV.  Bonapartism 297 

Epilogue 305 

Index 317 


PREFACE 

MOST  universities  offer  courses  of  lectures  in  what  is  called  the 
History  of  Political  Thought.  The  nature  of  these  courses  is 
fairly  reflected  in  the  books  compiled  on  this  subject;  books  written 
or  edited  by  the  lecturers  and  recommended  without  hesitation  to 
their  pupils.  While  the  titles  catalogued  are  numerous  and  varied,  the 
books  themselves  are  not  dissimilar  in  content.  Fluttering  the  pages 
of  any  volume,  chosen  at  random,  the  reader  will  not  fail  to  glimpse 
successively  the  names  of  Plato,  Aristotle,  Dante,  Machiavelli, 
Bacon,  Hobbes,  Locke,  Bentham  and  Mill.  On  adjacent  shelves  he 
will  find  editions  of  the  works  from  which  the  compiler  has  drawn — 
More's  Utopia,  Machiavelli's  Prince,  Bacon  in  person  and  Halifax 
himself.  A  study  of  these  books,  both  texts  and  commentary,  is  held 
to  constitute  a  sufficient  grounding  in  political  theory,  useful  to  the 
student  of  history  and  of  interest  indeed  to  anyone. 

While  the  value  of  these  works  (or,  at  any  rate,  of  some  of  them)  is 
beyond  question,  their  general  tendency  is  not  without  its  dangers. 
The  reader  is  left  with  fallacies  as  well  as  facts.  These  fallacies  are 
neither  stated  nor  upheld  nor  even  perhaps  deliberately  implied. 
They  arise  indeed  less  from  the  study  of  any  given  work  than,  as  a 
general  impression,  from  all.  They  are  none  the  less  fallacious  for 
that  and  their  refutation  is  more  than  overdue. 

First  of  these  implicit  fallacies  is  the  idea  that  political  thought  is 
confined  to  authors  and  denied  to  everyone  else.  By  this  reasoning  we 
must  learn  the  ideas  of  Plato  and  Laski  and  can  safely  ignore  those  of 
Pericles  and  Churchill.  This  is  surely  to  give  an  absurd  weight  to  the 
accident  of  authorship.  The  idea  expressed  verbally  or  in  action  may 
be  at  least  as  novel  and  potent  as  the  idea  expressed  with  pen  and  ink. 
Closely  connected  with  this  fallacy  is  the  idea  that  political  theory 
has  its  origin  in  ancient  Greece.  The  classically-educated  historian 
has  rarely  thought  it  necessary  to  go  either  further  back  or  further 
afield.  He  may  have  been  misled  by  the  derivation  of  the  words  in 
use;  and  yet  the  absurdity  of  this  would  seem  obvious  enough.  To 
deny  that  there  were  politics  before  the  Greeks  invented  the  word  is 
no  more  reasonable  than  to  assume  that  the  Greeks  were  uncivilised 
until  the  Romans  had  taught  them  Latin. 

If  it  is  wrong  to  conclude  that  all  political  theory  began  with  Plato, 
it  is  at  least  equally  wrong  to  suppose  that  all  political  thinking  has 
been  done  in  Europe  and  America.  Of  nearly  every  basic  political 


8  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

concept  it  is  true  to  say  that  the  Greeks  had  a  word  for  it  and  often 
the  word  that  is  still  in  use.  That  is  not  to  say,  however,  that  there  is 
no  Chinese  word  with  a  similar  meaning.  Still  less  need  we  assume  that 
the  Chinese  and  Indians  have  had  no  ideas  of  their  own.  There  are 
books  purporting  to  summarise  the  history  of  political  thought  of 
which  it  can  truly  be  said  that  they  do  nothing  of  the  kind.  Candid  at 
least  are  the  book  titles  in  which  'Western'  political  thought  is 
specified  and  more  candid  still  those  which  define  their  even  narrower 
scope  'From  Bacon  to  Halifax'.  But  while  there  is  reason  to  commend 
the  honesty  of  those  who  profess  to  do  no  more  than  they  have  done, 
there  is  less  to  be  said  for  their  originality  and  courage.  Too  many 
have  followed  each  other  along  the  same  well-trodden  track.  Too  few 
have  seen  that  a  history  of  political  thought  must  be  world-wide  if  it 
is  not  to  be  fallacious. 

Another  impression  which  the  reader  may  gain  from  reading  the 
current  books  on  political  thought  is  that  the  development  of  political 
institutions  has  progressed  steadily  from  the  days  of  Lycurgus  or 
Solon  down  to  the  present  day;  the  ultimate  achievement  being 
British  Parliamentary  Democracy  or  else  perhaps  the  American  Way 
of  Life.  There  are  here  two  separate  fallacies  involved.  The  first  lies 
in  the  assumption  that  all  history  illustrates  a  story  of  betterment  or 
progress  with  ourselves  as  the  final  product.  The  second  lies  in  the 
assumption  that  such  progress  as  there  has  been  is  a  western  achieve- 
ment in  which  no  oriental  can  claim  even  the  smallest  share.  History 
records  no  such  monopoly  and  no  such  unbroken  progression.  What 
the  historian  does  find,  however,  is  a  recurrence  of  the  belief  that 
perfection  has  been  reached  and  that  a  given  constitution  (like  that  of 
the  United  States)  represents  finality.  There  is,  in  fact,  no  historical 
reason  for  supposing  that  our  present  systems  of  governance  are 
other  than  quite  temporary  expedients.  To  demonstrate,  therefore, 
that  all  progress  leads  upwards  to  these  pinnacles  of  wisdom  is 
peculiarly  needless.  In  such  an  attempt  one  ignores  half  the  work  that 
has  already  been  done  and  all  the  work  that  is  still  to  do. 

The  belief  that  the  present  or  else  some  other  recommended 
constitution  can  represent  finality  is  as  old  or  older  than  Plato.  It 
runs  through  many  of  the  texts  which  the  student  is  required  to  read. 
It  forms  even  now  the  basis  for  heated  discussions  as  to  what  form  of 
rule  is  best.  It  is  essentially  pre-Darwinian,  however,  as  a  mode  of 
thought.  No  believer  in  evolution  would  expect  to  find  that  sort  of 
finality.  He  would  rather  regard  society  as  a  growing  tree  than  as  a 
building  nearing  its  completion.  He  would  hope  to  trace  a  pattern  of 
growth  and  decay.  He  would  question,  on  principle,  whether  any 
society  could  be  static.  He  would  see  in  finality  nothing  more  nor  less 
than  death.  In  practice,  however,  it  is  easier  for  the  student  of  to-day 


PREFACE  9 

to  appreciate  how  institutions  have  evolved  than  to  grasp  that  their 
evolution  must  and  should  continue.  Even  when  the  likelihood  of 
further  development  is  recognised,  it  is  usually  seen  as  a  perfecting  of 
what  exists;  as  the  process,  for  example,  by  which  representative 
democracy  can  be  made  more  representative  still.  But  history  shows 
us  no  previous  example  of  institutions  thus  perfected.  It  reveals  rather 
a  sequence  in  which  one  form  of  rule  replaces  another,  each  in  turn 
achieving  not  perfection  but  decay.  The  fallacy  of  the  Utopians  is  to 
suppose  that  finality  can  and  should  be  attained.  To  the  believer  in 
evolution  nothing  could  seem  less  probable. 

One  other  error  implied  in  the  existing  text-books  is  that  the 
published  works  of  political  theorists  have  had  a  vast  influence  on 
actual  events.  The  student  is  all  too  apt  to  visualise  each  leader  as  one 
likely  to  refer  to  a  book  before  deciding  upon  a  policy.  But  Robes- 
pierre no  more  slept  with  Le  Contrat  Social  under  his  pillow  than  did 
Louis  XVI  refer  to  the  Leviathan.  No  actual  politician  is  greatly 
influenced  by  a  book  of  political  theory  although  many  have  been 
influenced  by  a  book  of  religion.  The  politician  who  reads  at  all  will 
have  read  not  only  the  text  which  the  historian  thinks  significant  but 
forty-nine  other  forgotten  works  of  which  the  historian  has  never  even 
heard.  And  if  one  book  appears  to  have  been  his  favourite  it  will  be 
because  the  author  recommends  what  he,  the  ruler,  has  already 
decided  to  do;  or  what  indeed  he  has  already  done.  Historically,  the 
book  comes  afterwards  to  defend  the  deed.  This  is  not  to  say  that  the 
book  is  always  written  after  the  revolution  it  seems  to  justify.  It  may 
be  written  beforehand,  gaining  its  wide  circulation  only  after  the 
event.  The  books,  by  contrast,  which  supported  the  losing  cause  have 
been  forgotten,  overlooked,  destroyed — or  else  never  published. 
There  is  thus  a  natural  selection  among  books,  giving  to  some  the 
popularity  and  survival  which  rewards  what  is  relevant  to  the  mood  of 
an  age,  and  ensuring  for  others  the  oblivion  reserved  for  all  that  seems 
eccentric  and  out  of  tune.  In  ancient  China  (as  in  modern  China)  the 
books  out  of  accord  with  the  party  line  were  deliberately  burnt.  In 
England  or  America  the  books  thus  out  of  step  will  remain  un- 
published for  lack  of  expected  sales.  It  is  not  books  which  influence 
political  events.  It  is  the  events  which  decide  which  book  is  to  be 
pulped  and  which  made  compulsory  reading  in  the  schools. 

The  significance  then  of  the  political  theorist  is  not  that  he  guided 
the  ruler  but  that  he  provided  the  ruler  with  a  rational  explanation  of 
what  he,  the  ruler,  had  already  done.  His  works  to  that  extent  throw 
light  upon  the  age  in  which  he  lived — or  at  any  rate  upon  the  age  in 
which  his  works  were  widely  read.  But  to  interpret  policy  throughout 
the  ages  in  terms  of  its  literary  justification  is  open  to  certain  ob- 
jections, of  which  the  chief  is  that  politics  are  far  older  than  political 


10  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

theory.  To  begin  the  story  where  it  is  usually  made  to  begin  (in 
Athens  of  the  5th  century  B.C.)  is  to  omit  the  essential  background  to 
all  human  affairs;  the  background  studied  by  the  anthropologist.  It 
would  be  untrue  to  say  that  all  authors  on  the  history  of  political 
theory  have  ignored  this  background.  It  is  with  reference  to  it, 
however,  that  they  prove  least  convincing.  They  are  apt  to  perpetuate 
by  quotation  the  mistakes  made  (perhaps  unavoidably)  by  the 
earlier  political  thinkers.  These  philosophers  were  apt  to  picture  a 
happy  community  of  primitive  men  suddenly  deciding  to  organise 
themselves  and  elect  a  ruler. 

'I  assume'  writes  Rousseau, "^  'that  men  have  reached  a  point  at 
which  the  obstacles  that  endanger  their  preservation  in  the  state  of 
nature  overcome  by  their  resistance  the  forces  which  each  individual 
can  exert  with  a  view  to  maintaining  himself  in  that  state.  Then  this 
primitive  condition  can  no  longer  subsist,  and  the  human  race  would 
perish  unless  it  changed  its  mode  of  existence.  .  .  .' 

[The  problem  is]  'To  find  a  form  of  association  which  may  defend 
and  protect  with  the  whole  force  of  the  community  the  person  and 
property  of  every  associate,  and  by  means  of  which  each,  coalescing 
with  all,  may  nevertheless  obey  only  himself  and  remain  as  free  as 
before'.  [To  this  problem  the  Social  Contract  furnishes  the  solution.] 

'The  clauses  of  this  contract  are  so  determined  .  .  .  that,  although 
they  have  never  perhaps  been  formally  enunciated,  they  are  every- 
where the  same,  everywhere  tacitly  admitted  and  recognised'. 

There  might  be  no  great  harm  in  reading  this  piece  of  eighteenth 
century  rhetoric  provided  that  the  antidote  were  to  follow.  The 
student  who  is  advised  to  read  drivel  should  at  least  be  warned  that  it 
is  drivel  he  is  being  asked  to  read.  Wild  guesses  about  primitive  man 
are  needless,  for  primitive  man  has  survived  for  our  study.  And  even 
the  slightest  acquaintance  with  the  aborigines  of  Australia,  Malaya 
or  Borneo  will  convince  the  student  that  no  human  beings  have  ever 
come  together  with  an  open  mind  to  discuss  the  basis  of  their  social 
organisation.  Nor  is  there  any  reason  to  suppose  that  our  primitive 
ancestors  in  Europe  or  indeed  in  ancient  Britain  were  in  this  respect 
/very  different  from  the  peoples  whose  culture  has  remained  primitive. 

/  There  has  never  been  a  clean  page  upon  which  to  write  a  constitu- 
tion. Man  had,  from  the  start,  physical,  biological  and  mental 
characteristics;  and  many  of  these  he  still  retains.  It  is  by  these 
inherited  characteristics,  dating  back  for  thousands  of  years,  that  his 

"political  institutions  have  been  influenced.  Books  which  fail  to  make 
this  clear  are  as  misleading  as  they  are  tedious,  as  dangerous  as  they 
are  wrong. 

It  is  no  wonder  that  the  social  anthropologist  turns  with  disgust 

'  Social  Contract.  J.  J.  Rousseau.  Chapter  VI. 


PREFACE  11 

from  works  of  political  theory.  In  a  recent  and  important  work  on  the 
political  structure  of  African  tribes/  the  editors  explain  how  un- 
helpful they  found  these  works  to  be. 

We  have  not  found  that  the  theories  of  political  philosophers  have 
helped  us  to  understand  the  societies  we  have  studied  and  we  consider 
them  of  little  scientific  value;  for  their  conclusions  are  seldom  for- 
mulated in  terms  of  observed  behaviour  or  capable  of  being  tested  by 
this  criterion.  Political  philosophy  has  chiefly  concerned  itself  with 
how  men  ought  to  live  and  what  form  of  government  they  ought  to 
have,  rather  than  with  what  are  their  political  habits  and  institutions. 

In  so  far  as  political  philosophers  have  attempted  to  understand 
existing  institutions  instead  of  trying  to  justify  or  undermine  them,  they 
have  done  so  in  terms  of  popular  psychology  or  of  history.  They  have 
generally  had  recourse  to  hypotheses  about  earlier  stages  of  human 
society  presumed  to  be  devoid  of  political  institutions.  .  .  . 

The  editors,  in  this  instance,  find  some  excuse  for  the  political 
theorist  in  that  'little  anthropological  research  has  been  conducted 
into  primitive  political  systems'  and  even  less  effort  made  to  correlate 
what  little  has  been  done.  While  it  is  thus  true  to  say  that  the  subject 
remains  largely  unexplored,  it  is  also  manifest  (even  from  such 
knowledge  as  there  is)  that  the  theories  of  'original  contract'  are 
baseless  suppositions.  The  anthropologist  may  not  be  ready  to 
explain  how  political  institutions  first  came  into  being  but  he  is  at 
least  prepared  to  describe  theories  as  'unscientific'  which  are  sup- 
ported neither  by  evidence  nor  probability. 

From  a  study  of  the  existing  text-books  in  political  theory  some 
would  conclude  that  the  whole  subject  were  better  taken  from  the 
historian  and  handed  to  the  social  anthropologist.  Rather  than  leave 
this  subject  to  historians  whose  works  reflect  an  ignorance  of 
anthropology,  an  ignorance  of  real  politics  and  an  ignorance  of  any- 
thing outside  Europe  and  America,  some  would  prefer  to  set  up 
schools  of  political  science.  For  this  plan  there  is  much  to  be  said. 
The  difficulty  about  it,  as  applied  to  political  ideas  current  in  his- 
torical times,  is  that  every  political  theorist  has  an  historical  back- 
ground. He  thinks  within  the  framework  of  the  world  he  knows. 
Eliminate  the  historian  and  you  lose  all  trace  of  the  political  thinker's 
background  and  motives.  Apart  from  this  danger,  it  is  a  question 
whether  the  historian  should  remain  ignorant  of  social  anthropology. 
It  might  be  better  to  include  pre-history  in  the  syllabus  which  the 
future  historian  must  study.  Whatever  is  done,  however,  there  will 
remain  fields  of  investigation  which  the  historian  and  social  anthro- 
pologist may  have  to  share.  No  great  harm  should  result  if  their 

^African  Political  Systems.  M.  Fortes  and  E.  E.  Evans-Pritchard.  Oxford,  1940. 
See  4th  Impression  (1950),  pp.  4  and  5. 


12  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

activities  should  overlap.  More  harm  results,  as  at  present,  in  fields 
which  each  has  left  to  the  other.  So  far  from  overlapping,  their 
present  activities  do  not  even  meet. 

While  it  would  be  absurd  to  follow  previous  writers  in  assuming 
that  political  thought  begins  with  the  Greeks,  it  is  to  them  that  we  owe 
many  of  the  political  terms  commonly  in  use.  As  these  are  not  al- 
ways used  in  exactly  the  same  sense,  it  may  be  as  well  at  this  point 
to  define  the  terms  used  in  this  book.  As  the  Greeks  perceived,  there 
are,  broadly  speaking,  three  alternatives  in  government;  rule  by  one, 
rule  by  a  few  and  rule  by  many.  Rule  by  one  person  can  take  the  form 
of  Monarchy,  Despotism  or  Dictatorship.  Monarchy  is  the  rule  by 
a  King  or  Queen,  depending  upon  religion,  descent,  election  or 
established  custom.  Despotism  is  the  rule  by  a  King  or  Queen, 
established  and  maintained  by  force  or  cunning.  Dictatorship  is  rule 
by  a  person  who  is  neither  King  nor  Queen  whose  authority  derives 
from  a  particular  emergency  and  whose  office  is  widely  regarded  as  a 
temporary  expedient.  Rule  by  a  few  can  take  the  form  of  Feudalism, 
Aristocracy  or  Oligarchy.  Feudalism  is  rule  by  nobles,  each  with 
control  of  some  province  or  locality  and  many  almost  independent 
of  any  centralised  authority.  Aristocracy  is  rule  by  persons  enjoying 
a  special  and  often  inherited  respect,  acting  mainly  through  a 
central  government  under  their  own  control.  (Theocracy,  or  rule  by 
a  priesthood,  is  one  form  of  Aristocracy).  Oligarchy  is  rule  by  a  few 
persons  with  no  special  claim  to  respect  other  than  for  their  wealth, 
ability  or  vigour.  (Bureaucracy,  or  rule  by  officials,  is  one  form  of 
Oligarchy).  Rule  by  many  can  take  the  form  of  Democracy,  Rep- 
resentative Democracy  or  Anarchy.  Democracy  is  rule  by  all  or  by  a 
majority  of  the  voters,  by  direct  expression  of  their  will.  Represen- 
tative Democracy  is  rule  by  all  or  a  majority  of  the  voters  but  through 
elected  representatives.  Anarchy,  if  it  can  be  termed  a  form  of  rule, 
means  the  refusal  of  a  large  number  to  be  ruled  at  all. 

Although  the  basic  forms  of  government  are  only  three,  it  would 
obviously  be  wrong  to  expect  any  government  to  conform  exactly  to 
any  one  of  them.  In  practice,  forms  of  rule  are  often  mixed.  Thus,  a 
pure  monarchy  or  despotism  is  difficult  to  maintain  for  long  except 
over  a  relatively  small  area.  A  single  ruler  soon  needs  help  and,  in 
seeking  it,  becomes  a  little  less  absolute.  Despotism  or  even  Dictator- 
ship may  become  monarchy  by  virtue  of  time  and  habit.  A  Democracy 
may  still  retain  elements  of  earlier  forms  of  rule.  When,  therefore,  a 
State  is  here  described  as,  say,  an  Aristocracy,  it  must  be  taken  to 
mean  the  preponderance  of  Aristocratic  rule,  not  the  exclusion  of  any 
other  form. 

If  we  owe  some  of  our  terminology  to  Plato,  it  is  from  both  Plato 
and  Aristotle  that  we  take  the  idea  of  sequence.  As  a  scientist  and  the 


PREFACE  13 

son  of  a  physician,  Aristotle  perceived  that  forms  of  rule  decay  and 
so  give  place  to  others.  He  did  not  prescribe  a  single  type  of  con- 
stitution as  best  for  every  State.  The  laws  towards  which  he  was  feeling 
his  way  were  not  The  Laws  of  Plato  but  the  laws  of  change.  With  his 
aid  we  can  readily  perceive  at  least  a  tendency  for  Monarchy  to  turn 
into  Aristocracy  or  Feudalism,  for  Aristocracy  to  become  Democracy 
(perhaps  via  Oligarchy),  for  Democracy  to  turn  into  chaos  and  for 
order  to  be  restored  by  a  Despotism  or  Dictatorship.  When  the 
Dictatorship  gives  place  to  Monarchy  the  wheel  has  turned  full  circle 
and  the  process  may  begin  again.  It  would,  of  course,  be  a  gross 
exaggeration  to  represent  this  tendency  as  an  invariable  rule.  The 
sequence  is  subject  to  many  variations  and  exceptions.  It  can  be 
disrupted  as  a  result  of  war.  And  different  lands  within  the  same 
civilisation  develop  at  different  speeds  so  that,  existing  side  by  side, 
they  represent  different  stages  of  the  same  sequence.  Thus  a  historian 
of  the  remote  future  might  remark  that  the  countries  of  Europe 
mostly  passed  from  Democracy  to  Dictatorship  during  the  first  half 
of  the  Twentieth  Century.  This  would  be  true,  broadly  speaking,  but 
he  would  have  to  note  certain  exceptions  and  explain  that  the  various 
transitions  were  not  simultaneous  and  that  the  countries  affected  were 
not  necessarily  adjacent  to  each  other.  We  to-day  can  generalise  about 
the  past  in  much  the  same  way,  again  noting  the  exceptions.  And  one 
factor  which  we  can  observe  as  regulating  the  speed  of  change  is  the 
area  and  physical  nature  of  the  country  to  be  governed.  It  is  almost 
impossible  to  govern  a  vast  and  diverse  area  except  by  loyally  up- 
holding a  more  or  less  divine  Monarch.  While  the  sequence  of  the 
forms  of  rule  may  be  roughly  followed,  the  tendency  is  to  hurry 
through  the  forms  that  are  obviously  unworkable  and  return  with 
relief  to  the  form  which  offers  most  stability.  It  is  perhaps  this  factor 
more  than  any  other  which  prevents  much  valid  generalisation  about 
any  given  period.  If  the  Athenians  were  democrats  when  the  Persians 
were  not,  it  was  basically  because  they  had  a  different  problem  to 
solve. 

In  a  study,  therefore,  of  political  institutions  and  the  ideas  to  which 
they  give  rise,  there  is  reason  to  abandon  chronology  and  concentrate 
on  the  successive  forms  of  governance,  in  this  book  the  plan  followed 
is  to  take  each  form  in  turn  and  show  its  origin,  its  nature,  its  relative 
success,  its  theoretical  justification,  its  decline  and  its  decay.  For  this 
purpose  the  historical  examples  will  be  taken,  for  purposes  of 
illustration,  from  any  period  and  from  any  land.  This  must  involve 
drawing  upon  the  political  experience  of  different  civilisations.  This  is 
a  useful  process  although  difficult  in  a  book  of  this  size.  But  the  reader 
who  is  thus  encouraged  to  take  a  world-wide  view  should  remember 
that  the  political  approach  is  only  one  of  several.  During  the  life  of  a 


14  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

given  civilisation  the  lands  affected  by  it  may  undergo  different 
forms  of  rule,  and  perhaps  in  a  more  or  less  logical  sequence,  but  the 
civilisation  has  a  life  cycle  of  its  own  and  one  perhaps  uninfluenced  by 
political  ideas.  The  rise  and  fall  of  civilisations  might  best  be  studied 
in  terms  of  climate,  food  supply,  soil-erosion,  reproduction  and 
disease.  As  compared  with  factors  such  as  these,  the  forms  of  rule  are 
a  superficial  matter.  It  is  true  that  certain  forms  of  government  are 
often  associated  with  a  civilisation's  early  development.  It  would  be 
far  more  difficult  and  controversial  to  show  what  type  of  government 
prevailed  at  its  zenith  or  during  its  decay.  There  is,  to  begin  with,  a 
difficulty  in  agreeing  as  to  when  the  zenith  was  reached  and  almost  as 
great  a  difficulty  in  fixing  a  period  for  a  civilisation's  end. 

If  we  see  the  sequence  of  political  institutions  as  falling  within  the 
life-cycle  of  the  different  civilisations,  it  is  relevant  to  ask  how  long  a 
civilisation  may  be  expected  to  last.  The  Graeco-Roman  civilisation 
might  be  said  to  have  had  a  life  of  900-1,000  years  (say,  from  500  B.C. 
or  rather  earlier,  to  about  a.d.  400).  The  civilisation  of  Sumeria  and 
Babylon  may  have  lasted  about  1,000  years,  too.  If  we  regard  the 
Chou,  Ch'in,  and  Sui  Dynasties  of  China  as  representing  different 
civilisations,  they  might  be  credited  with  durations  of  750,  800  and 
770  years  respectively.  From  a.d.  321  to  1525  India  had  a  civilisation 
which  thus  lasted  about  1,200  years.  The  civilisation  of  Inca  Peru 
lasted  1,100  years  and  that  of  Aztec  Mexico  about  850.  Apart  from 
the  doubtful  examples  of  Egypt  and  Japan,  we  might  be  tempted  to 
conclude  that  civilisations  have  an  average  life  of  about  a  thousand 
years.  Any  such  conclusion  would  be  rash  but  there  would  be  some 
justification  for  denying  that  many  civilisations  have  lasted  very  much 
longer.  It  has  been  argued,  indeed,  that  the  periods  of  high  civilisation 
have  all  been  relatively  brief: — 

The  acme  of  Greek  civilization  is  confined  to  the  fifth  and  fourth 
centuries  B.C.,  Hellenistic  civilization  to  the  third  and  second  cen- 
turies B.C.  Rome  was  certainly  not  a  really  cultured  country  before 
the  first  century  B.C.,  and  her  creative  period  ended  with  the  second 
century  of  the  Christian  era.  We  may  reckon  the  Byzantine  civilization 
at  best  from  the  sixth  to  the  tenth  Century,  the  Arab  civilization  from 
the  eighth  to  the  twelfth.  .  .  .  The  periods  of  high  civilization  are 
always  short — a  few  centuries,  sometimes  hardly  one  century.^ 

The  difficulty  is  one  of  definition.  It  might  not,  however,  be  wildly 
amiss  to  think  of  a  civilisation  as  lasting  up  to  about  a  thousand  years, 
with  its  greatest  achievements  confined  to  a  middle  period  of  two  or 
three  centuries.  Any  sequence  (or  repeated  sequences)  in  the  forms  of 
rule  must  usually  fall  within  that  space  of  time.  But  to  associate  the 

'  The  Passing  of  the  European  Age.  Eric  Fischer.  Cambridge,  1948,  p.  191. 


PREFACE  15 

highest  achievements  with  any  one  form  of  rule  would  be  difficult,  if 
only  from  a  lack  of  agreement  as  to  what  the  highest  achievements  are. 

The  plan  of  this  book,  it  will  be  seen,  is  analytical.  It  is  not  to  the 
purpose  to  predict  the  future  or  recommend  some  particular  form  of 
rule.  There  is  included,  however,  an  epilogue  which  concerns  the 
present.  This  is  not  designed  as  a  remedy  for  present  ills  but  merely 
as  a  plea  for  studying  them  in  a  more  scientific  way. 

The  author's  thanks  are  due  to  his  pupils  at  the  University  of 
Malaya,  with  many  of  whom  these  problems  have  been  discussed; 
to  his  secretary,  Mrs.  Y.  J.  G.  Lawton,  without  whose  tireless  help  the 
book  would  still  be  no  more  than  a  mass  of  illegible  notes;  and  to 
Ann,  who  has  had  to  be  very,  very  patient. 


C.  NoRTHCOTE  Parkinson 


University  of  Malaya 
Singapore 


INTRODUCTION 

Primitive  Man 


IN  the  Introduction  to  a  recent  work  on  social  anthropology, 
already  mentioned  in  the  Preface/  the  editors  state  that  'We  do 
not  consider  that  the  origins  of  primitive  institutions  can  be  dis- 
covered and,  therefore,  we  do  not  think  it  worth  while  seeking  for 
them'.  This  may  be  true.  It  need  not,  however,  prevent  us  from 
noting  what  appear  to  be  the  basic  characteristics  of  man,  considered 
from  a  political  point  of  view.  It  is  hardly  in  question,  for  example, 
that  men  have  always  (since  being  recognisable  as  men)  lived  in 
groups  of  some  kind,  family  groups  or  tribes.  Man  is  thus  a  social 
animal,  although  less  so  perhaps  than  some  other  creatures,  especially 
certain  insects.  Man  is  also  carnivorous,  able  to  live  on  either  a  meat 
or  a  vegetable  diet  but  equipped  with  teeth  different  from  those  of  a 
grass-eating  animal.  Some  at  least  of  his  food  has  always  been  trapped 
or  pursued,  fished  or  shot.  Then  again,  the  young  of  the  human 
family  (born  singly,  for  the  most  part,  not  in  a  litter)  are  helpless  for 
an  exceptionally  long  period,  needing  protection  and  care  for  many 
years  and  maturing  very  slowly  indeed. 

These  physical  facts  have  their  political  implications.  Among 
carnivorous  creatures  with  slowly-maturing  young  there  must  be  a 
fairly  sharp  differentiation  between  the  sexes.  With  the  young  to  be 
fed,  nursed  and  protected,  the  more  active  pursuits  must  be  left  to 
the  male.  In  hunting  and  kindred  activities  men  have  therefore  felt 
superior  to  women.  As  against  that,  women  and  children  must  be 
kept  out  of  danger  if  the  family  group  is  to  survive.  If  men  are  killed 
in  hunting,  the  survivors  may  still  be  enough  for  breeding  purposes. 
The  same  is  not  true  of  women,  upon  whose  number  the  natural 
increase  must  depend.  Add  to  this  differentiation  of  the  sexes  the 
prolonged  differentiation  between  the  adult  and  the  young.  Human 
children  must  be  taught  (and  therefore  controlled)  for  so  long  that 
their  subordination  becomes  habitual.  And  this  obedience  to  those 
older  and  more  skilled  may  survive  after  the  child  has  become  an 
adult.  In  the  social  group  a  certain  authority  is  thus  vested  in  the 
older  members. 

The  authority  of  age  merges  into  the  parental  authority.  Although 

'  African  Political  Systems.  Ed.  by  M.  Fortes  and  E.  E.  Evans-Pritchard.  Oxford, 
1940,  4th  Impression,  1950. 

17 


18  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

primitive  people  often  fail  to  recognise  paternity,  developing  com- 
munities have  all  come  to  see  in  it  a  heightening  of  the  authority  of 
age  in  the  special  relationship  between  father  and  child. ^  It  is  this 
relationship  which  provides  us  with  our  basic  notions  of  authority 
and  disciphne.  Nearly  all  our  common  terms  of  respect  are  derived 
from  it.  We  have  thus  the  words  'Sir'  (Sire),  'Monsieur',  'Little 
Father'  (in  Russian),  'Father'  as  addressed  to  a  priest  or  'Holy 
'Father'  as  addressed  to  the  Pope.  Psychologists  break  up  the  idea  of 
respect  into  the  three  elements  of  wonder,  affection  and  fear.  The 
child  thus  feels  for  his  father  some  wonder  at  the  ability  of  an  older 
person  to  do  what  the  child  cannot;  some  affection  for  an  older  person 
whose  intention  is  at  least  to  ensure  the  child's  survival;  and  some 
fear  of  an  older  person  who  may  punish  the  child  by  smacking  its  head. 

If  physical  characteristics  have  a  bearing  on  political  development, 
so  no  doubt  have  mental  characteristics.  It  has  thus  been  observed 
that  man  has  taken  about  500,000  years  to  evolve,  of  which  period 
490,000  years  passed  before  any  sort  of  settled  existence  began  and 
495,000  before  writing  was  invented.^  So  that  all  inherited  charac- 
teristics are  pre-civilised  in  origin.  This  is  obviously  true  of  the  basic 
instincts  of  hunger,  fear,  hatred  and  sex;  for  these  are  shared  with 
other  animals.  But  man  would  seem  to  have,  in  addition,  such  ten- 
dencies as  Animism,  Taboo,  Fear  of  the  Unknown  and  Revenge. 
Animism  is  the  ascribing  to  animals,  mountains,  wind  and  thunder 
the  individual  character  man  perceives  in  himself.  The  schoolboy, 
having  named  his  bicycle,  will  soon  endow  it  with  a  personality. 
Animistic  objects  invade  the  undergraduate's  essay,  all  sorts  of  actions 
being  ascribed  to  'The  Spirit  of  the  Reformation'  or  'The  Soul  of 
India'.  A  whole  nation  becomes  personified  in  its  king  or  its  flag. 
Taboo  represents  a  confusion  of  mind  over  ethical,  moral  or  sacred 
matters.  It  takes  the  form  of  odd  distinctions  between  what  is  'pure' 
and  'impure'.  It  surrounds  the  crime  of  incest  and  befogs  the  question 
of  whether  a  man  should  marry  his  deceased  wife's  sister.  Fear  of 
the  unknown,  the  novel,  the  foreign,  is  a  deeply  implanted  emotion 
from  which  few  men  are  wholly  free.  And  the  primitive  idea  of 
revenge  lurks  behind  our  criminal  law,  our  prisons  and  our  gallows. 
These  and  other  instincts  inform  the  political  ideas  of  mankind. 

The  physical  characteristics  of  man  would  seem  obvious  enough. 
They  have  often,  however,  been  overlooked,  as  for  example  in  the 
American  Declaration  of  Independence,  which  reads :  'We  hold  these 
truths  to  be  self-evident,  that  men  are  born  equal.  .  .  .'  Whatever  else 

'  Matriarchy  appears  to  be  an  earlier  institution  but  the  term  is  misleading  as  applied, 
for  example,  to  certain  districts  of  Malaya.  Matriarchy  there  means  primarily  the 
inheritance  of  property  through  women  and  dates  presumably  from  a  period  when 
descent  through  the  male  line  could  not  be  traced. 

-  The  Mind  in  the  Making.  J.  H.  Robinson.  New  York,  1939,  p.  65. 


INTRODUCTION  19 

that  first  truth  may  be  it  is  not  self-evident.  It  might  perhaps  be 
defended  in  terms  of  Christian  or  Islamic  theology.  Taken,  however, 
from  its  religious  context,  it  becomes  difficult  to  sustain.  Are  'men', 
in  this  sense,  to  include  women?  If  so,  their  equality  is  doubtful  now 
and  was  firmly  denied  in  eighteenth  century  America.  Are  'men'  to 
include  persons  of  the  age  of  twenty  or  less?  For  these  are  not,  and 
never  have  been,  politically  or  even  legally  equal  to  adults.  Are 
younger  brothers  equal,  for  that  matter,  to  elder  brothers?  They  were 
certainly  not  so  in  English  or  American  law.  Lastly,  are  'men'  in  this 
sense,  to  include  negroes?  The  Americans  of  Washington's  generation 
had  a  prompt  answer  to  that.  But  what  becomes  of  the  grand 
generalisation  when  the  exceptions  to  it  include  the  majority  of 
mankind?  A  Christian  will  assert  that  all  souls  are  equally  valuable 
in  the  sight  of  God:  but  that  equality  is  lost  when  one  child  is 
baptised  and  another  not.  Nearest  perhaps  to  the  truth  was  the 
Indian  thinker  Asvaghosa,  who  asserted  that  human  beings  are  'in 
respect  of  joy  and  sorrow,  love,  insight,  manners  and  ways,  death, 
fear  and  life  all  equal'. ^  But  this  philosopher,  while  attacking  caste, 
says  nothing  of  the  other  basic  inequalities;  the  differentiation  be- 
tween male  and  female  functions,  the  subordination  of  child  to 
parent,  the  subordination  of  the  young  to  any  elder  person  and  the 
subordination  of  the  younger  child  to  the  elder.  One  might  find  a 
further  inequality  based  upon  the  size  of  family,  for  the  child  who  is 
one  of  fourteen  is  less  valuable  to  its  parents  than  the  child  who  is 
one  of  two  or  the  only  one  of  its  sex. 

Our  knowledge  about  the  political  ideas  of  primitive  man  goes 
little  beyond  our  awareness  of  the  basic  characteristics  which  we  still 
possess.  What  knowledge  we  have  has  been  confused,  moreover,  by 
the  persistent  and  widespread  legend  of  the  Golden  Age.  This  legend, 
known  to  the  Greeks,  was  also  believed  among  the  Indians  and 
Chinese  and  can  be  paralleled  by  the  Jewish  story  of  the  Garden  of 
Eden  and  the  Fall.  The  Hindu  version  of  this  legend  is  thus  described 
by  Beni  Prasad : — 

In  a  passage  of  poetic  brilliance  the  Vanaparva  records  how  in  very 
ancient  days  men  lived  a  pure  godly  life.  They  were,  in  fact,  equal  to 
gods.  They  could  ascend  to  heaven  and  return  to  earth  at  will.  The 
wishes  of  all  were  fulfilled.  Sufferings  were  few  and  real  trouble  or  fear 
was  none.  Perfect  virtue  and  happiness  reigned.  The  span  of  life 
extended  over  thousands  of  years.  But  all  this  was  changed  after  a 
long  while.  The  Santi-parva,  too,  has  it  that  there  was  at  first  a  sort  of 
Golden  Age  wherein  existed  neither  sovereignty  nor  king,  neither 
chastisement  nor  chastiser.  All  men  used  to  protect  one  another 
righteously.   But  after  a  while  their  hearts  were  assailed  by  error. 

'  Theory  of  Government  in  Ancient  India.  Beni  Prasad.  Allahabad,  1927.  See  p.  219. 


20  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

Their  faculties  of  perception  were  clouded;  their  virtue  declined; 
greed  and  avarice  set  in.  The  downward  course  continued.  .  .  .^ 
He  refers  to  the  same  legend  elsewhere,  stating  that: 

The  Buhaddharma  Purana,  an  Upapriana,  gives  its  political  theory 
in  the  form  of  a  narration  of  the  ancient  history  of  the  human  race. 
The  world  began  with  the  golden  age  called  Satya  Yuga  which  was  free 
from  all  sorrow  and  sin,  disease  and  disputes.  It  was  a  heaven  of 
perfect  virtue  and  happiness.  .  .  .^ 

The  anthropologist  of  to-day  is  less  prone  to  enthusiasm  about 
such  equality  as  exists  among  primitive  peoples.  Even  Darwin  ob- 
served that  the  equality  observable  among  the  Fuegian  tribes  'must 
for  a  long  time  retard  their  civilisation'.^  More  recently,  Landtman 
has  pointed  out*  that  such  equality  as  exists  among  the  Papuans, 
Bushmen,  Hottentots,  Nagas,  Andamanese  and  other  peoples  is 
directly  associated  with  their  low  degree  of  culture.  The  emergence 
of  the  idea  of  rank  is  connected  with  'a  somewhat  higher  degree  of 
evolution'. 

The  Chinese  Golden  Age  was  described  by  Kwang-Tze,  follower 
of  Lao-Tze  (604-532  b.c.)  in  a  passage  which  has  been  rendered 
thus: — 

In  the  age  of  perfect  virtue,  men  attached  no  value  to  wisdom.  .  .  . 
They  were  upright  and  correct,  without  knowing  that  to  be  so  was 
Righteousness:  they  loved  one  another,  without  knowing  that  to  do  so 
was  Benevolence:  they  were  honest  and  loyal-hearted,  without  know- 
ing that  it  was  Loyalty;  they  fulfilled  their  engagements  without 
knowing  that  to  do  so  was  Good  Faith.  .  .  .^ 

This  legend  found  ready  acceptance  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
when  talk  about  the  'Noble  Savage'  was  not  uncommon  among 
literary  men  who  had  read  Captain  Cook's  description  of  the  South 
Sea  Islanders.  More  recently,  moreover,  it  has  been  defended  by 
W.  J.  Perry  and  G.  Elliot  Smith,  who  attributed  great  virtues  to 
primitive  peoples,  asserting  that  'savages',  whose  merits  were  less 
obvious,  had  once  been  civilised  and  are  thus  degenerate  rather  than 
primitive.  Of  this  theory  it  may  suffice  to  say  that  while  some  primi- 
tive people  might  be  shown  to  have  been  honest,  inoffensive, 
contented  and  mild,  they  can  also  be  shown  to  have  been  thin,  small, 
hungry,  dirty  and  diseased,  and  their  life  'poore,  nasty,  brutish  and 
short'. *^ 

The  modern  anthropologist  is  less  inclined  to  draw  distinctions 
between  primitive  people  and  savages.  He  is  more  hesitant  in  fact 

'  I  hid.,  p.  27. 

-  Theory  of  Government  in  Ancient  India.  Beni  Prasad,  p.  193. 

'  Journal  of  Re.searche.s.  C.  Darwin,  Chapter  X. 

'  The  Origin  of  the  Inequality  of  the  Social  Clas.'^es.  G.  Landtman.  London,  1938,  p.  3 

'  Human  History.  G.  Elliot  Smith,  p.  182. 

'■  Leviathan.  T.  Hobbcs.  Part  L  Chap.  XIII. 


INTRODUCTION  21 

about  generalising  in  any  context.  To  early  political  institutions, 

moreover,  he  has  given  perhaps  less  attention  than  to  anything  else. 

The  following  passage,  however,  quoted  from  a  standard  work,  may 

typify  the  views  that  are  currently  held: — 

Among  simpler  primitives  there  are  above  all  two  principles  which 
form  the  foundation  of  government:  first,  the  territorial  principle — 
that  is,  the  geographically  limited  area  belonging  to  a  number  of 
people:  second,  the  community  which  exceeds  the  single  family,  be  it 
local  group,  clan,  tribe  or  people.  On  these  two  pillars  repose  the 
governmentlike  institutions  of  primitive  cultures.  .  .  . 
...  In  Australia  and  among  some  other  food-gathering  tribes  the 
executive  agencies  of  public  opinion  were  the  old  men  who,  seasoned 
in  life  and  in  the  tribal  laws,  not  only  informed  the  younger  ones 
concerning  the  boundaries  of  the  clan  territory,  but  also  instructed 
them  in  the  laws  of  marriage,  the  rites  of  initiation,  the  distribution  of 
food — all  those  norms  existing  from  time  immemorial. 

Our  sources  report   unanimously  that  chieftainship  was  slightly 
developed  or  absent.  .  .  .^ 

Whether  or  not  food-gathering  peoples  lived  (or  still  live)  in  a 
Golden  Age,  it  seems  generally  agreed  that  their  main  political 
institution  was  merely  the  authority  of  the  older  men.  Nor  is  this 
difficult  to  understand,  for  family  groups  which  are  to  live  on  wild 
fruit,  berries,  roots,  game  and  fish  cannot  grow  to  beyond  a  certain 
size.  With  a  larger  number  than  about  twenty  the  food  would  be 
insufficient  near  any  one  camp  in  the  recognised  hunting-ground. 
And  among  as  small  a  number  as  they  were  likely  to  muster  the 
problems  of  government  need  hardly  arise.  Typical  of  food-gatherers 
are  the  Semang  (or  Negritos)  of  Malaya,  about  which  people  a  great 
deal  has  been  written.  In  1926,  it  is  true,  Mr.  R.  J.  Wilkinson  re- 
marked that  'with  all  this  mass  of  literature  we  know  next  to  nothing 
about  the  aborigines  .  .  .  books  are  big  when  facts  are  few'"  but  more 
detailed  work  was  afterwards  done  by  Ivor  H.  N.  Evans.^  He  wrote 
of  them  that: 

.  .  .  The  groups  seem  to  be  but  little  organised,  but  in  every  camp  will 

be  found  an  acknowledged  headman  and  often,  too,  a  'medicineman' 

who  is  also  an  important  personage  in  the  life  of  the  people.  .  .  . 

The   Semang  can   be   readily  contrasted  with   the   rather  more 

advanced  aboriginal  tribes,  inaccurately  termed  the  Sakai.  These  have 

a  rather  more  settled  existence,  with  a  little  agriculture,  and  with 

them  the  chief  and  the  medicine-man  are  more  firmly  established. 

Of  them  Wilkinson  wrote: — 

...  we  find  that  the  smallest  political  unit  among  the  central  Sakai  is 

'  General  Anthropology.  Ed.  by  Franz  Boas.  New  York,  1938.  Chap.  X.  Government 
by  Julius  E.  Lips.  See  pp.  487-527. 

-Papers  on  Malay  Subjects:  the  Aboriginal  Tribes.  R.  J.  Wilkinson.  1926.  p.  10. 
"  The  Negritos  of  Malaya.  Ivor  H.  N.  Evans.  Cambridge,  1937. 


22  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

the  family-group.  Every  family — by  which  is  meant  a  living  patriarch 
and  all  his  descendants  and  not  a  mere  menage  of  husband  and  wife — 
keeps  together  and  keeps  to  itself:  it  does  not  unite  with  others  for 
mutual  protection  and  social  intercourse.  Exogamy  means  marrying 
into  another  family,  not  into  another  tribe.  A  number  of  these  family- 
units  living  within  a  definite  area  and  recognising  a  common  hereditary 
chief  make  up  the  Sakai  State — if  such  a  term  is  permissible  in  the 
case  of  so  small  a  community.  .  .  .  [The  Chief]  settles  disputes  between 
one  family  and  another,  and  keeps  peace  generally  in  his  tribe.  .  .  . 
Within  the  family-group  property  was  held  in  common;  and  the 
unsuccessful  hunter  .  .  .  [received  his  share  of  the  food]. 
.  .  .  Communistic  ideas  are  strong  among  the  Sakai.  At  the  same  time, 
their  Communism  does  not  imply  liberty,  equality  and  fraternity. 
There  is  a  vast  amount  of  ceremonious  family  etiquette  and  a  host  of 
technicalities  regulating  the  mode  of  address  of  one  member  of  the 
family  to  another.  It  is  a  serious  offence  for  a  young  .  .  .  [Sakai]  to 
address  an  elder  by  his  personal  name.  .  .  .^ 

If  a  state  is  recognisable  by  'the  maintenance  of  political  order 
within  fixed  territorial  limits'  the  Sakai  may  be  said  to  have  formed 
states.  These  states  remain,  however,  in  a  very  rudimentary  form. 

IMention  has  already  been  made  of  the  'medicineman',  the  sooth- 
sayer, wizard  or  magician,  who  figures  in  some  of  the  most  primitive 
societies  and  rather  gains  in  importance  as  their  culture  becomes 
more  advanced.  His  functions  arise  perhaps  mainly  from  two  innate 
characteristics  of  man;  the  tendency  to  fear  such  natural  phenomena 
as  thunder  and  lightning,  and  the  tendency  to  dream  at  night.  Of  the 
Semang  Wilkinson  writes,"  'He  fears  lightning  and  thunder  to  such  an 
extent  that  observers  have  credited  him  with  the  possession  of  a 
thunder-god'.  If  thunder  thus  gives  rise  to  the  idea  of  a  god  of  wrath, 
dreams  as  naturally  promote  ideas  of  ghosts  and  immortality.  The 
'spirit'  is  thus  the  real  self,  the  something  which  is  absent  when  a 
person  is  asleep.  Where  is  it?  That  it  is  free  to  wander  is  shown  by 
the  sleeper  dreaming  of  being  somewhere  else  and  proved  again  when 
someone  else  has  dreamt  of  him.  On  death,  the  same  spirit  is  again 
missing  and  can  still  appear  in  another's  dream — proof  sufficient  that 
it  still  exists.  Here  are  good  grounds  for  belief  in  an  after-life.  Evans 
is  able  to  devote  twelve  chapters  of  his  book  to  Negrito  religion, 
chapters  which  cover  the  deities,  a  theory  of  the  world's  origin  and 
theories  of  death,  burial  and  the  life  to  come.  The  Negritos  have 
elaborate  stories  also  to  account  for  thunder,  lightning,  storms  and 
eclipses.  They  have,  too,  a  fairly  long  list  of  things  that  they  must  not 
say,  do,  eat  or  touch;  and  the  penalties  for  a  breach  of  etiquette 
illustrate  their  principal  fears — illness,  being  crushed  under  a  falling 

'  Wilkinson,  op.  cit.  p.  48. 

-  Papers  on  Malay  Subjects:  the  Aboriginal  Tribes.  R.  J.  Wilkinson.  1926.  p.  I. 


INTRODUCTION  23 

tree  or  being  killed  by  a  tiger.  The  Sakai  are  more  superstitious  still, 
believing  not  only  in  the  Sun  God  and  Moon  Goddess  but  also  in 
demons,  ghosts,  vampires,  dragons,  man-eating  monkeys,  giant  birds 
and  were-tigers.  The  communal  wizard,  known  at  least  among  the 
Semang,  is  a  key  man  among  the  Sakai. 

The  soothsayer  found,  as  he  gained  influence,  that  there  were  two 
policies  open  to  him.  In  the  first  place,  while  emphasising  the  danger 
of  demons  and  ghosts,  he  could  offer  various  charms  and  incantations 
which  defeat  the  evil  spirits  by  their  own  power;  many  comparable 
devices  still  linger  (for  example,  mascots,  crossing  the  fingers, 
throwing  salt  over  the  shoulder).  In  the  second  place,  he  could 
assert  that  the  benevolent  Sun  or  Moon  God  was  more  powerful 
than  the  demons  and  would  protect  those  who  approached  him  in 
the  right  way,  by  personal  appeal  and  with  suitable  gifts.  The 
magician  who  followed  the  first  policy  was  the  forerunner  of  the 
scientist,  the  physician  and  the  psychologist.  The  soothsayer  who 
preferred  the  second  policy  was  the  forerunner  of  the  priest.  Generally 
speaking,  the  priest  has  been  more  honest,  and  (until  recently)  more 
successful. 

The  classic  work  by  Sir  James  Frazer^  is  a  study  in  the  relationship 
between  magic  and  religion,  between  both  and  kingship.  In  it  he 
shows  that  all  or  most  peoples  have  believed  at  one  time  in  magic  and 
that  most  of  these  have  gradually  transferred  their  belief  to  religion, 
often  for  long  periods  believing  in  both.  He  remarks  that  the  sorcerer 
came  to  practise  for  the  whole  community  as  well  as  privately. 

Whenever  ceremonies  of  this  sort  are  observed  for  the  common 
good,  it  is  obvious  that  the  magician  ceases  to  be  merely  a  private 
practitioner  and  becomes  to  some  extent  a  public  functionary.  The 
development  of  such  a  class  of  functionaries  is  of  greet  importance  for 
the  political  as  well  as  the  religious  evolution  of  society.  For  when  the 
welfare  of  the  tribe  is  supposed  to  depend  on  the  performance  of  these 
magical  rites,  the  magician  rises  into  a  position  of  much  influence  and 
repute,  and  may  readily  acquire  the  rank  and  authority  of  a  chief  or 
king.  The  profession  accordingly  draws  into  its  ranks  some  of  the 
ablest  and  most  ambitious  men  of  the  tribe.  .  .  . 

This  may  well  have  been  so.  It  is  important,  however,  to  realise, 
that  the  really  primitive  tribe  had  little  to  offer  its  magician.  The 
Chiefship  to  which  he  might  aspire  (and  very  occasionally  with  suc- 
cess, as  in  Kedah)  carried  with  it  no  very  despotic  power.  The  rising 
importance  of  the  medicine-man  depended,  in  fact,  on  a  change  in 
the  habits  of  the  tribe.  While  the  people  remained  in  small  family 
groups  of  food-gatherers,  the  potentialities  of  both  chief  and  magician 

'  The  Golden  Bough:  a  study  in  magic  and  religion.  Sir  James  George  Frazer.  See 
Chapter  IV. 


24  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

were,  of  necessity,  undeveloped.  The  story  would  be  simpler  if  all 
food-gathering  peoples  had  developed  in  the  same  way  from  the  point 
at  which  they  abandoned  their  primitive  existence.  In  fact,  however, 
they  could  progress  in  two  different  ways,  if  indeed  they  were  to 
progress  at  all.  Some  concentrated  on  the  domestication  of  animals 
and  became  nomadic  herdsmen.  Others,  given  different  opportunities, 
became  cultivators  of  the  soil.  In  either  event,  the  change  of  habits 
brought  with  it  important  political  consequences,  but  these  were  not 
identical  as  between  cultivators  and  pastoralists.  To  some  extent  they 
diverged  and  it  is  upon  this  divergence  that  some  writers  have  laid 
the  greatest  stress.  The  divergence  itself  is  fitly  symbolised  in  the 
biblical  story  of  Cain  and  Abel  which  rightly  follows  after  the  story 
of  a  primeval  innocence.  The  danger  here  is  to  over-simplify  both  the 
divergence  and  its  results.  For  while  conflict  between  pastoralists  and 
cultivators  tended  to  follow,  the  latter  being  usually  vanquished,  it 
would  be  wrong  to  maintain  that  this  was  invariable.  Professor 
Franz  Oppenheimer  maintained^  that  all  states  known  to  history  are 
thus  characterised  by  the  domination  of  one  class  by  another  for  the 
purpose  of  economic  exploitation.  And  Professor  R.  H.  Lowie 
agreed  at  least  that  the  subjection  of  one  people  to  another  had  its 
origin  in  conquest.'-  More  has  since  been  discovered,  however,  about 
the  development  of  societies  in  both  America  and  Africa  and  it  is 
now  clear  that  there  are  exceptions  to  every  rule.^ 

Important  among  recent  studies  is  that  made  of  African  Political 
Systems  under  the  editorship  of  M.  Fortes  and  E.  E.  Evans-Pritchard.^ 
This  study  summarises  what  is  known  about  the  political  institutions 
of  eight  African  peoples.  Three  of  these,  the  Bantu  Kavirondo,  the 
Tallensi  and  the  Nuer,  developed  no  government  save  by  elders 
within  the  separate  tribes.  The  other  five,  the  Zulu,  Ngwato,  Bemba, 
Ankole  and  Kede,  developed  quite  advanced  forms  of  government 
but  not  in  such  a  way  as  to  justify  any  very  general  conclusions. 
While  it  is  true  that  some  of  these  peoples  are  cultivators,  and  others 
herdsmen — with  at  least  one  example  of  pastoralists  (Bahima) 
dominant  over  agriculturalists  (Bairu) — it  is  also  evident  that  they 
present  no  sharp  distinction  between  each  other  in  political  structure. 
This  would  seem  to  suggest  that  generalisations  hitherto  made  about 
the  political  tendencies  of  pastoral  peoples  are  not  applicable  to 
herdsmen  as  such  but  to  nomadic  horsemen.  To  find  the  equivalent 
in  Africa  of  the  Semitic  nomads  we  should  perhaps  turn  rather  to  the 
Fulbe  who  founded  the  Sokoto  empire  in  the  early  nineteenth 
century. 

'  Der  Staat  (1907)  quoted  in  The  Origin  of  the  State.  R.  H.  Lowie.  New  York,  1927. 

-  The  Origin  of  the  State.  R.  H.  Lowie.  New  York,  1927.  p.  42. 

'  General  Anthropology,  op.  cit.  p.  526. 

'  African  Political  Systems.  Oxford,  1940.  4th  Impression,  1950. 


INTRODUCTION  25 

Sir  Henry  Maine  drew  a  contrast  between  the  blood  tie  typical  of 
nomadic  people  and  the  territorial  tie  found  among  agriculturalists,^ 
and  in  general  his  ideas  are  still  agreed. 

Herdsmen  and  related  societies. 

.  .  .  The  individual  and  the  patriarchal  family  group  are  the  outstanding 
feature.  The  older  coUectivist  element  is  replaced  by  individualism. 
The  social  unit  is  the  patriarchal  family  group  (brothers,  nephews, 
sons,  grandsons)  which  also  claims  to  political  independence.  The  tribe 
is  headed  by  a  chief  who  has  been  elected  or  whose  office  is  hereditary. 
.  .  .  Typical  among  the  herdsmen  is,  above  all,  the  development  of 
private  ownership  and  the  accumulation  of  wealth  in  the  form  of 
stock.  This  at  the  same  time  presented  the  opportunity  of  developing 
class  distinctions  and  of  a  vertical  stratification  of  society,  a  differ- 
entiation of  rich  and  poor.  These  beginnings  of  a  hierarchic  system 
among  the  herdsmen  did  not  flourish  until  they  came  in  contact  with 
the  agricultural  societies.  The  law  of  inheritance  in  most  of  these 
tribes  is  marked  by  primogeniture. 

The  societies  of  herdsmen  of  the  Old  World  brought  about  a  political 
revolution  by  the  creation  of  large  empires  in  Asia  as  well  as  in 
Africa.^ 

This  last  statement  is,  no  doubt,  true.  But  was  the  revolution  due 
to  their  being  herdsmen  or  to  their  having  horses?  The  point  is  an 
interesting  one  for  it  is  rather  questionable  whether  the  preceding 
remarks,  applicable  to  Central  Asia,  Siberia,  Arabia  and  Mesopo- 
tamia, are  in  fact  equally  true  of  Africa.  Of  the  eight  African  peoples 
to  which  we  have  referred  the  Zulu  come  nearest,  perhaps,  to  being 
purely  pastoral.  But  of  them  it  is  stated  by  Max  Gluckman  that 
'The  clans  had  disappeared  as  units',  and  'members  of  a  single  clan 
might  be  found  in  many  political  groups'.^  He  also  remarks  that 
'there  were  few  ways  in  which  a  commoner  could  acquire  wealth'* 
and  that  the  wealth  of  a  chief  did  not  give  him  'opportunity  to  live  at 
a  higher  level  than  his  inferiors'.^  He  explains,  further,  that  'there  was 
no  class  snobbery  among  the  Zulu'  and  that  'all  had  the  same  educa- 
tion and  lived  in  the  same  way'.  If  the  Africans  turn  out  to  be  poor 
examples  of  'herdsmen',  the  factor  which  links  the  other  'herdsmen' 
may  be  found  to  be,  not  cattle  but  horses,  and  there  are  reasons 
for  supposing  that  this  might  well  be  so.  In  the  following  pages 
where  'pastoral  peoples'  are  mentioned  they  must  be  taken  to  mean 
nomadic  horsemen,  and  not  merely  the  owners  of  cattle. 

To  summarise  the  conclusions  so  far  reached,  primitive  men  are 
found  to  base  their  political  institutions,  such  as  they  are,  upon  the 

'  See  Ancient  Law.  Chapter  IV. 

-  General  Anthropology,  op.  cit.  p.  515  et  sea.  ' 

'  African  Political  Systems,  op.  cit.  pp.  28-29.  ',     ^ '    ' 

'  Ibid.  p.  45.  '  '  ,  . 

'  Ibid.  p.  44.  ,  \  /   '       ^ 


0[;iM 


26  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

authority  of  age.  They  are  essentially  social  and  tend  to  develop 
family  groups  which  are  migrant  within  a  recognised  territory.  If 
there  is  a  larger  tribal  organisation  the  chief  of  it  rarely  has  more  than 
a  vague  power  of  arbitration.  They  have  basic  instincts  common  to 
other  animals  but  these  do  not  necessarily  make  them  warlike;  and 
many  of  them  are  essentially  peaceful.  They  have  a  strong  belief  in 
the  supernatural,  a  belief  which  tends  to  strengthen  as  their  culture 
becomes  more  advanced.  Thus,  the  soothsayer  or  magician,  not  un- 
known among  the  most  primitive  of  them,  becomes  more  important 
among  those  who  have  progressed.  This  progress,  if  and  when  it 
takes  place,  may  be  in  one  of  two  general  directions;  towards  the 
domestication  of  animals  or  towards  the  growing  of  crops,  the  choice 
being  governed  by  climatic  and  other  conditions.  And  the  further 
political  development  of  each  group  is  influenced  by  the  change  in  its 
way  of  life,  the  pastoralists  diverging  most  sharply  from  the  culti- 
vators as  from  the  time  when  they  become  accustomed  to  using 
horses.  Even  from  as  brief  a  summary  as  this  it  is  manifest  that  many 
later  institutions  are  not  the  result  of  individual  inspiration  but  are 
deeply  rooted  in  the  social  character  of  mankind.  At  no  time  did 
primitive  men  attempt  to  frame  a  constitution  for  their  body  politic. 
They  had  their  basic  institutions  from  the  beginning,  moulded  by 
their  physical  and  mental  characteristics  and  observable  among  the 
most  primitive  of  them.  Their  further  ideas  were  bounded  and  guided 
by  a  framework  which  was  already  there. 


I^\ 


I  I   \    \\ 


PART    I 

Monarchy 


CHAPTER   I 

Monarchy  among  Agricultural  Peoples 


AGRICULTURE  is  traditionally  thought  to  have  originated  in 
L  Egypt  about  5000  b.c.^  the  local  legend  about  it  being  thus 
rendered  by  Plutarch : 

When  Osiris  came  to  his  kingdom  ...  [he  found]  .  .  .  the  Egyptians 
living  a  life  such  as  animals  lead.  He  taught  them  the  art  of  agriculture, 
gave  them  laws,  and  instructed  them  in  the  worship  of  the  gods  [of 
which  he  was  to  become  one  of  the  chief]. 

It  is  unlikely  that  one  genius  taught  the  Egyptians  everything,  but 
there  is  significance  in  the  sequence  of  progress  as  here  defined: 
agriculture,  laws,  religion.  For  agriculture  indeed  came  first  and  with 
vast  and  immediate  implications.  Elliot  Smith  supposes  that  barley 
grew  wild  on  the  Nile  banks,  being  developed  through  periodic  floods 
and  then  spread  by  irrigation.  He  points  out,  moreover,  following 
Professor  Cherry,  that  the  Nile  is  unique,  not  only  in  flowing  from 
the  tropics  into  a  temperate  zone  but  in  having  a  double  water- 
supply.  Thus  the  equatorial  sources  maintain  a  steady  flow  while  the 
floods  in  August  and  September  come  from  the  Blue  Nile,  at  other 
times  nearly  dry.  The  inundation  in  September  immediately  precedes 
the  cool  part  of  the  year,  which  begins  in  October.  These  conditions, 
he  argues,  ideally  suited  for  the  cultivation  of  millet  and  barley,  are 
found  in  no  other  part  of  the  world.  Be  that  as  it  may,  agriculture 
spread  from  Egypt,  and  perhaps  from  other  centres,  and  transformed 
the  lives  of  people  everywhere.  Nor  would  it  affect  the  present 
argument  if  it  were  shown  that  agriculture  was  developed  indepen- 
dently in  more  regions  than  one. 

The  political  implications  of  an  agricultural  life  are  bound  up,  to 
begin  with,  in  the  settlement  of  communities  in  a  given  place  and  not 
merely  within  a  given  area.  Agriculture  necessitated  the  formation  of 
villages — sited  in  the  Nile  Valley,  it  is  believed,  on  the  higher  contours 
above  flood  level.  Villages  dependent  upon  agriculture  could  be  far 

'  There  is  no  certainty  that  it  did  not  originate  also  in  Mesopotamia,  nor  indeed  that 
it  did  not  originate  in  Syria,  spreading  thence  to  both  Egypt  and  Mesopotamia.  U  has 
been  pointed  out  that  a  form  of  wheat  grows  wild  on  the  slopes  of  Mount  Herman  and 
elsewhere  between  southern  Syria  and  Moab.  Early  Man,  his  origin,  development  and 
culture.  G.  Elliot  Smith  and  others.  London,  1931.  See  especially  Lecture  V  by 
H.  J.  E.  Peake    p.  122. 

28 


MONARCHY     AMONG     AGRICULTURAL     PEOPLES  29 

more  populous  than  any  encampment  previously  formed — there 
would  be  food  for  a  greater  number.  Then,  cultivation  of  the  land 
soon  necessitates  fences  and  boundaries,  primarily  to  keep  animals 
out  of  the  crops  but  leading  naturally  to  a  new  idea  of  property  and 
hence  of  law.  As  agriculture  develops  the  need  arises  for  the  carpenter 
and  metal-worker  (to  make  and  mend  the  implements),  the  builder 
(to  construct  the  granary),  the  watchman  (to  guard  it)  and  the  lawyer 
(to  settle  boundary  disputes).  A  new  need  arises  for  a  calendar,  by 
which  to  judge  when  to  plant,  and  a  new  and  intense  interest  is  shown 
in  sun  and  water.  The  weather  becomes  that  absorbing  topic  of 
conversation  that  it  has  ever  since  remained. 

Another  result  of  a  people  turning  to  agriculture  is  that  religion 
tends  to  become  more  important  than  magic.  The  primitive  man 
food-gathering  in  the  jungle  is  concerned  with  his  personal  or  family 
luck.  He  may  find  fruit  or  edible  roots.  He  may  come  across  a  sitting 
target  for  his  arrow.  But  he  may  equally  meet  a  tiger,  a  cobra,  a 
ghost  or  a  demon.  The  cultivator,  by  contrast,  has  helped  to  clear  an 
area  of  land,  perhaps  pushing  back  the  jungle.  He  works  thence- 
forward in  fields  well  known  to  him.  The  risk  of  meeting  something 
unpleasant  is  greatly  reduced  and  so  likewise  is  the  chance  of  an 
unexpected  windfall.  He  has  planted  seed  and  chiefly  wants  a  good 
crop.  And  the  good  or  bad  weather  which  affects  one  group  will 
probably  affect  other  groups  as  well.  The  cultivator  is  less  concerned 
with  the  tiresome  spirits  which  haunt  trees,  hills,  wells  and  cemeteries 
and  proportionately  more  interested  in  the  beneficent  gods  who 
govern  the  sowing,  the  growth  and  the  harvest.  The  task  of  persuad- 
ing the  Sun  God  to  ripen  the  grain  is  not  the  individual's  or  family's 
responsibility,  for  all  alike  are  involved.  It  is  a  communal  matter,  best 
handled  by  an  expert  interceding  on  behalf  of  the  village.  The  sooth- 
sayer entrusted  with  this  task  is  inevitably  more  priest  than  magician, 
a  public  officer  and  one  of  growing  importance.  Magic  lingers  in  the 
hills  and  forests  and  among  wandering  folk  like  gypsies.  It  lingers  too 
in  the  normal  human  mind.  But  religion  became  predominant  as  from 
the  period  when  men  turned  to  agriculture. 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  change  which  favoured  the  priest 
also  favoured  the  chief.  The  agricultural  unit,  the  village,  was  larger 
than  the  family  group  and  offered  more  scope  to  a  ruler.  And  it 
offered  him  still  wider  scope  when  it  developed  into  a  town  and,  later, 
into  a  city.  Apart  from  that,  however,  the  agriculture  which  depended 
upon  irrigation  more  than  upon  local  rainfall  brought  many  villages 
into  close  association.  In  some  respects  their  interests  might  be  the 
same.  In  other  respects  their  interest  were  more  likely  to  conflict. 
The  economic  unit,  for  purposes  of  irrigation,  would  ideally  com- 
prise the  whole  river  system.  It  could  certainly  be  nothing  as  small  as 


30  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

a  village.  A  more  extended  political  power  would  go  to  the  man  with  a 
calendar  or  else  to  the  man  who  first  discovered  the  principles  of 
irrigation.  Kingship  might  have  grown  from  that  alone,  but  in  Egypt 
the  powers  of  the  priest  were  added  to  those  of  the  chief.  Either  the 
priest  secured  the  office  of  ruler  or  else  it  was  the  ruler  who  assumed 
priesthood.  In  Egypt,  at  any  rate,  Kingship  was  the  result  of  com- 
bining the  two  functions  in  one.  It  is  clear,  however,  that  the  religious 
function  was  regarded  as  the  more  important.  The  King-Priest's  first 
duty  was  to  intercede  with  the  Sun  God.  He  might  incidentally  rule  the 
country  but  that  was,  by  comparison,  a  trivial  duty.  Why  should  the 
Sun  God  listen  to  him?  For  the  same  reason  that  a  human  chief  or 
patriarch  will  listen  to  a  request — because  it  is  made  by  his  son.  It 
follows  that  the  King  is  the  son  of  the  god.  One  can  readily  imagine 
an  astute  ruler  explaining  this  theory  to  his  subjects.  In  fact,  however, 
it  is  still  more  likely  that  it  was  they  who  explained  it  to  him. 

The  Sun  God  cult  is  believed  to  have  originated  at  Heliopolis, 
together  with  the  solar  calendar. 

.  .  .  The  man  who  had  made  himself  the  artificer  of  the  new  order  also 
made  himself  king.  When  he  foretold  the  future  behaviour  of  the  river 
and  measured  the  year,  his  subjects  believed  that  he  was  something 
more  than  a  prophet :  he  was  the  cause  of  the  changes  he  had  accurately 
predicted.  People  believed  that  the  king  controlled  the  forces  of  Nature. 
He  not  only  caused  the  river  to  rise,  and  then  made  the  dry  land,  but 
by  so  doing  this,  they  imagined,  he  created  the  earth,  and  conferred 
upon  the  waters  their  life-giving  powers.^ 

It  has  been  questioned  indeed  whether  any  people  carried  this  cult 
as  far  as  did  the  Egyptians. 

The  Egyptians  of  the  Fifth  Dynasty  thus  had  thorough-going  ideals 
of  the  divine  nature  of  their  kings,  and  it  is  doubtful  whether  the 
identity  between  royalty  and  divinity  was  carried  so  far  in  any  other 
state.  'The  Egyptians  dare  not  look  at  their  king.  The  king  could 
bring  on  rain,  make  sunshine  ...  he  was  master  of  thunder  ...  he  bran- 
dishes his  sceptre  like  a  thunderbolt.  As  king  of  the  harvest  he  turns 
over  the  earth  and  presides  over  the  sowing.  Sickle  in  hand  he  cuts  the 
grain'.  From  him  therefore  could  be  expected  the  same  benefits  as  from 
the  gods  themselves.^ 

The  Egyptians  may  have  originated  kingship  and  carried  the  cult 
furthest,  but  all  ancient  monarchies,  almost  without  exception,  were 
ruled  by  Children  of  the  Sun.  Perry  traces  the  idea  to  India,  to  Indo- 
nesia (including  Timor,  Celebes  and  Bali),  to  the  Philippines,  to 
Polynesia,  to  Hawaii,  New  Zealand,  Samoa  and  the  New  World.  It  is 

'  Human  History.  G.  Elliot  Smith.  London,  1930.  p.  277 

-  The  Children  of  the  Sun.  W.  J.  Perry.  2nd  ed.  London,  1927. 


MONARCHY     AMONG     AGRICULTURAL     PEOPLES  31 

implicit  in  the  Chinese  conception  of  Heaven,  to  which  only  the 
Emperor  could  sacrifice.  As  for  the  Japanese,  they  have  retained  the 
cult  almost  to  this  day.  A  celebrated  Japanese  wrote  of  his  country  :— 

Great  Yamato  is  a  divine  country.  It  is  only  our  land  whose  foun- 
dations were  first  laid  by  the  divine  ancestor.  It  alone  has  been  trans- 
mitted by  the  sun  goddess  to  a  long  line  of  her  descendants.  There  is 
nothing  of  this  kind  in  foreign  countries.^ 

Here  the  author  is  mistaken.  All  dynasties  used  to  trace  their 
pedigree  to  a  divine  ancestor.  It  is  also  important  to  realise  that  what 
is  outmoded  now  in  the  cult  was  once  a  brilliant  innovation  and  the 
very  thing  that  distinguished  a  civilised  people  from  those  less 
advanced.  As  a  modern  author  has  well  expressed  it: — 

The  ancient  Near  East  considered  kingship  the  very  basis  of 
civilization.  Only  savages  could  live  without  a  king.  Security,  peace  and 
justice  could  not  prevail  without  a  ruler  to  champion  them.  If  ever  a 
political  institution  functioned  with  the  assent  of  the  governed,  it 
was  the  monarchy  which  built  the  pyramids  with  forced  labor.  .  .  .^ 

While  it  might  be  safe  to  assume  that  monarchy  was  usually  the 
result  of  the  chief  assuming  the  functions  of  priest,  the  deified 
monarchy  of  Egypt  seems  to  date  from  the  period  during  which  a 
high-priest  of  the  Sun  God  made  himself  the  ruler.  Userkaf,  who 
founded  the  fifth  dynasty  in  about  2750  B.C.,  had  been  high-priest  at 
Heliopolis.  He  is  believed  to  have  been  the  first  Pharaoh  to  claim 
divine  descent.^  Previous  rulers  were  divine,  no  doubt,  but  not  until 
after  death.  The  combining  of  the  priestly  and  secular  powers  had 
been  known  also  in  the  Sumerian  cities  but  due  to  the  opposite 
process.  'The  Sumerian  patesi  was  a  magistrate  who  performed 
sacred  or  priestly  functions;  the  kings  of  the  fifth  dynasty  were 
priests  who  had  usurped  royal  powers'.* 

In  Egypt  the  Chief  and  the  Priest  had  thus  become  united  in  the 
person  of  the  King  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  strongest 
monarchies  were  those  founded  in  this  way.  But  there  were  from  the 
beginning  the  monarchies  in  which  the  priestly  power  was  vested 
separately.  This  was  so  in  India  and  at  least  one  story  of  how 
monarchy  originated  there  would  make  its  purpose  more  strictly 
utilitarian. 

.  .  .  Another  theory  of  the  origin  of  the  state  which  Mahabharata  has 
preserved  brings  us  a  little  nearer  Hobbes.  It  paints  the  state  of  nature 
not  as  a  Golden  Age  of  righteousness  but  as  a  period  of  terrible 
anarchy.  ...  So  they  lived  for  a  while  but,  after  some  time,  they  felt 

'  The  Pageant  of  Japanese  History.  M.  M.  Dilts.  New  York,  1938. 

-  Kingship  and  the  Gods.  Henri  Frankfort.  Chicago,  1945. 

"  See  Priests  and  Kings  by  Harold  Peake  and  H.  J.  Fleure.  Oxford,  1927. 

*  Priests  and  Kings,  op   cit.  pp.  177-178. 


32  THE     EVOLUTION     OK     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

acutely  the  need  of  a  king.  They  assembled  and  approached  the  Grand- 
sire,  saying,  'Without  a  king,  O  Divine  Lord,  we  are  going  to  destruc- 
tion. Appoint  some  one  as  our  king!  All  of  us  shall  worship  him  and  he 
shall  protect  us'.  The  Grandsire  nominated  Manu  to  be  king  but 
Manu  replied  'I  fear  all  sinful  acts.  To  govern  a  kingdom  is  exceedingly 
difficult,  especially  among  men  who  are  always  false  and  deceitful  in 
their  behaviour'.  [But  he  was  persuaded  into  it  and  given  the  following 
encouragement: — ]  'Like  the  sun  scorching  everything  with  his  rays, 
go  out  for  winning  victories,  crush  the  pride  of  foes  and  let  righteous- 
ness always  triumph'.^ 

There  is  much  that  is  of  interest  in  this  account  and  much  that  can 
be  paralleled  by  the  Old  Testament  story  of  how  the  Jewish  kingship 
was  founded.  To  begin  with,  a  divine  Grandsire  was  there  already 
when  the  clamour  began.  Symbolically  at  least  this  would  seem  to  be 
correct.  It  was  from  the  patriarch  that  the  king  took  his  idea  of 
authority,  claiming  afterwards  to  be  'the  father  of  his  people'.  Apart 
from  this,  the  proposal  to  appoint  a  king  (if  ever  such  a  proposal  was 
made)  could  come  only  from  a  people  to  whom  the  idea  of  monarchy 
was  familiar.  This  would  mean  virtually  copying  from  another  and 
adjacent  people:  a  procedure  the  more  understandable  if  the  people 
in  question  were  thought  to  be  hostile.  The  Jews,  for  example,  are 
described  as  asking  Samuel  to  choose  a  king  for  them.  On  his  ex- 
pressing reluctance,  they  said  'Nay;  but  we  will  have  a  king  over  us; 
that  we  also  may  he  like  all  the  nations;  and  that  our  king  may  judge 
us,  and  go  out  before  us,  and  fight  our  battles.  .  .  ."-  The  words 
italicised  suggest  how  readily  the  institution  of  monarchy  might 
spread  by  imitation. 

India  provides  the  best,  though  not  perhaps  the  only  example  of 
monarchy  kept  distinct  from  priesthood.  There  is  much  in  the 
relationship  which  the  Indians  themselves  are  unable  to  explain. 

The  professional  priesthood  is  seen  practically  from  the  very  begin- 
ning of  the  Rig  Veda  period.  Its  position  is  entirely  separate  from  that 
of  monarchy.  The  fact  is  somewhat  puzzling  in  conception.  A  study  of 
the  earliest  organization  of  the  other  branches  of  the  Aryan  family 
reveals  the  fact  that  the  original  leader  was  the  king,  the  priest  and  the 
head  of  the  fighting  host;  and  there  is  nothing  to  suppose  that  the 
particular  branch  that  came  to  India  began  with  a  special  polity  or 
stepped  lightly  over  some  of  the  stages  while  retaining  fully  the 
wisdom  derived  from  the  experience  of  each.  The  latter  fact  is  clear 
from  the  subsequent  history  of  the  race  during  which,  in  spite  of  the 
predominant  influence  of  the  priests  (the  Brahmanas),  there  was  no 
attempt  on  their  part  to  become  king  de  jure,  although  they  wielded, 
through  their  influence  on  the  ruler,  all  the  powers  of  the  king.  Any 

'  The  Theory  of  Government  in  Ancient  India.  Beni  Prasad.  Allahabad,  1927.  p.  29. 
-  Samuel,  8,  verses  4-20. 


MONARCHY     AMONG     AGRICULTURAL     PEOPLES  33 

explanation,  however,  of  the  early  separation  of  priesthood  from 
kingship  in  India  must  be  conjectural;  there  is  no  record  previous  to 
the  Rig  Veda,  and  in  the  Rig  Veda  it  is  recognized  as  an  established 
institution.  .  .  .^ 

So  in  India  the  king  was  less  than  a  god  and  less,  in  some  ways, 
than  the  Brahmans.  Elsewhere,  however,  the  king  was  godlike,  but 
in  an  age  when  the  gods  retained  some  very  human  characteristics 
and  failings.  The  idea  of  the  king's  sanctity  still,  for  that  matter, 
survives. 

But  if  ideas  survive,  men  do  not,  and  early  history  is  full  of  the 
efforts  made  to  explain  the  death  of  a  supposedly  immortal  Sun 
King.  In  point  of  fact,  the  king  often  died  before  his  time  owing  to  a 
drought  or  excess  of  rainfall  which  he  might  have  averted  but  did  not. 
His  office  was  not  without  its  occupational  risks.  As  recently,  more- 
over, as  1890,  a  Malayan  Annual  Report  contains  the  statement  that 
a  series  of  bad  harvest  had  been  attributed  locally  to  the  evil  influence 
of  the  British  Resident.  One  way  or  another,  then,  the  king  even- 
tually died.  The  situation  could  be  met  in  several  ways.  It  was  possible, 
first  of  all,  to  preserve  his  body  and  maintain  firmly  that  he  was  still 
alive.  Next,  it  could  be  argued  that  he  had  become  a  god — that  he 
had  been  a  god  all  along,  in  fact — and  that  he  had  returned  to  the 
home  of  the  gods.  Lastly,  it  could  be  claimed  that  he  had  been  re- 
incarnated in  his  successor,  who  was  in  fact  the  same  man  but  now 
provided  with  a  younger  body. 

Exactly  how  the  Egyptians  reasoned,  who  favoured  the  first  of  these 
alternatives,  may  not  be  known.  We  know,  however,  that  they  buried 
their  kings  with  great  care,  producing  the  earliest  joiners  and  brick- 
makers  for  that  special  purpose.  And  they  provided  each  dead  king 
with  his  food,  weapons,  furniture  and  toilet  articles.  Efforts  of  this 
kind  also  included  the  elaborate  methods  of  embalming  by  which 
mummies  were  preserved  and  the  even  more  elaborate  masonry  built 
over  the  grave,  initially,  to  prevent  the  treasure  from  being  stolen. 
With  the  Dynastic  Egyptians  monumental  masonry  became  the  chief 
national  industry.  Something  of  the  same  treatment  has  been 
accorded  in  many  lands  to  the  dead,  and  not  only  to  the  dead  of 
royal  birth.  Primitive  peoples  have  funeral  rites  based  clearly  on  the 
belief  that  the  spirit  survives  death.  The  Scandinavians  gave  their  dead 
leaders  a  Viking's  funeral  and  the  Chinese  still  burn  at  funerals  the 
pasteboard  replicas  of  things — including  motor-cars — which  may  be 
needed  in  the  next  world.  The  custom  is  understandable  and  especially 
so  where  royalty  is  concerned.  The  Incas  of  Peru  were  also  preserved 

'  Indo- Aryan  Polily,  being  a  slitdy  of  the  economic  and  political  condition  of  India  as 
depicted  in  the  Rig  Veda.  P.  Basu.  London,  1925.  It  is  rash,  however,  to  generalise  too 
confidently.  See,  for  example,  A  History  of  Hindu  Political  Theories.  V.  Ghoshal. 
Oxford,  1923.  p.  228. 


34  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

after  death  and  periodically  exhibited,  and  something  of  the  same 
practice  lingers,  it  is  said,  in  University  College,  London.  The 
deceased  monarch  is  not  really  allowed  to  die. 

The  second  theory,  by  no  means  inconsistent  with  the  first,  made 
the  king  a  god  and  not  merely  a  descendant  of  the  gods.  The 
Egyptian  Osiris  was  thus  a  Deified  King  and  the  position  was  in- 
herited by  his  Roman  successors,  Julius  Caesar  and  Augustus,  who 
were  deified  when  they  died  and  thereafter  worshipped.  Nor  have 
other  kings  been  without  supernatural  powers;  the  Emperor  of 
Japan,  for  example,  being  something  more  than  a  man.  The  theory 
that  deifies  a  king  on  his  death  inevitably  makes  him  superhuman 
even  while  he  is  alive.  In  many  lands  this  attempt  to  invest  the  living 
king  with  a  godlike  quality  has  made  the  monarch  a  sort  of  idol, 
seen  immobile  on  state  occasions  or  possibly  not  seen  at  all.  A 
sufficiently  rigid  etiquette  may  make  it  almost  immaterial  whether 
the  idol  is  actually  alive  or  dead. 

The  third  alternative  has  been  fully  described  in  The  Golden 
Bough}  and  is  again  not  inconsistent  with  the  other  two.  The  Egyp- 
tians portrayed  their  kings  with  a  minimum  of  individuality,  their 
sculptures  depicting  each  as  an  impersonal  image  of  kingship. 

.  .  .  There  is  a  mystic  communion  between  father  and  son  at  the 
moment  of  succession,  a  unity  and  continuity  of  divine  power  which 
suggests  a  stream  in  which  the  individual  rulers  come  and  go  like 
waves. ^ 

The  whole  process  hinges  on  the  moment  of  succession  for  which 
some  smooth  organisation  seems  essential.  It  is  vital  to  know  before- 
hand who  the  successor  is  to  be  and  as  vital  to  ensure  that  he  is 
actually  present.  The  easiest  way  to  provide  for  this  is  to  fix  the  date 
in  advance,  putting  the  old  king  to  death  at  an  agreed  moment,  with 
his  successor  at  hand.  (Why  should  the  old  king  object?  His  soul  is 
merely  being  transferred).  This  custom  is  closely  connected  with  a 
popular  interest  in  the  king's  virility.  It  was  always  doubted  whether 
an  old  or  ailing  king  could  fulfil  his  main  function  of  making  the 
crops  grow.  Better,  surely,  to  kill  him  in  good  time.  Kings  were  thus 
despatched  in  Cambodia,  Ethiopia,  on  the  Congo  and  in  other  parts 
of  Africa.  One  way  was  to  wait  until  his  powers  failed,  as  was  done  at 
Shilluk  on  the  White  Nile.  In  Uganda,  too,  the  King  of  Ankole  was 
never  allowed  to  die  of  illness  or  age.  'As  soon  as  his  wives  and 
followers  observed  signs  of  weakness,  the  Mugabe  was  given  a  poison 
which  brought  about  his  death'. ^  Another  way  was  to  allow  him  a 

'  The  Golden  Bough.  Sir  James  Frazer.  Chapter  XXIV.  p.  264  el  seq.  in  the  one- 
volume  edition. 

'  Kingship  and  the  Gods.  p.  35. 
°  African  Political  Systems,  p.  156. 


MONARCHY    AMONG     AGRICULTURAL     PEOPLES  35 

fixed  term  of  office — twelve  years  in  Calicut,  nine  years  in  Sweden, 
eight  years  in  Sparta  and  five  years  in  Malabar.  Yet  another  was  for 
the  people  to  take  action  when  they  saw  fit,  as  at  Passier  on  the  north 
coast  of  Sumatra.  The  king's  spirit  then  passed  to  his  successor,  who 
might  have  to  be  present  to  catch  his  last  breath.  The  successor  might 
be  his  eldest  son  or  possibly  the  man  (probably  a  relative)  who  killed 
him.  The  succession,  in  any  case,  was  instantaneous;  as  in  England, 
for  example,  it  still  is.  Some  kings  eventually  found  means  to  die  by 
deputy.  It  was  a  policy  which  kings  themselves  may  have  been  the 
first  to  propose.  In  Siam  the  king  thus  died  (by  deputy)  each  year  at 
the  end  of  April.  In  other  instances  the  king  would  sacrifice  a  son  as 
his  deputy;  obviously  a  better  equivalent.  There  are  traces  of  this 
custom  in  the  Bible.  It  may  have  been  a  younger  son  who  first 
suggested  that  an  animal  would  do  instead.  Originally,  however,  such 
parodies  of  a  godly  custom  would  have  been  unacceptable.  It  has 
been  pointed  out  that  the  Egyptian  mode  of  address  to  their  kings 
was  not  'Majesty'  but  'Embodiment'  or  'Incarnation'. 

.  .  .  They  are  not  merely  respectful  phrases  but  phrases  which 
emphasise  that  the  earthly  ruler  incorporates  an  immortal  god.  The 
names  of  the  individual  kings  serve  only  to  distinguish  the  successive 
incarnations.^ 

It  cannot  be  sufficiently  emphasised  at  this  point  that  the  primary 
functions  of  kingship,  more  especially  in  agricultural  communities, 
were  essentially  religious.  The  temptation  is  to  rationahse  the  story 
and  explain  that  a  king's  leadership  was  necessary  in  war,  or  necessary 
indeed  for  many  other  practical  purposes.  Bernard  Shaw  said  that 
rulers  are  so  necessary 

.  .  .  that  any  body  of  ordinary  persons  left  without  what  they  call 
superiors,  will  immediately  elect  them.  A  crew  of  pirates,  subject  to  no 
laws  except  the  laws  of  nature,  will  elect  a  boatswain  to  order  them 
about  and  a  captain  to  lead  them  and  navigate  the  ship,  though  the 
one  may  be  the  most  insufferable  bully  and  the  other  the  most 
tyrannical  scoundrel  on  board.  .  .  .^ 

Of  modern  society  this  may  be  true,  but  of  primitive  people  it  is 
certainly  wrong.  Peoples  like  the  Nuer  of  the  Southern  Sudan  have 
never  appointed  rulers.  Nor  have  they,  for  any  practical  purpose, 
felt  the  need  of  them. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  king,  once  provided  for  religious  purposes, 
was  often  found  useful  in  other  ways.  Leadership  in  war  was  not 
necessarily  one  of  them.  Kingship  is  almost  certainly  older  than  war. 
Nor,  for  that  matter,  has  command  been  invariably  vested  in  the  king 

'  Kingship  and  the  Gods.  p.  45. 

-  The  Intelligent  Woman's  Guide  to  Socialism,  etc.  G.  B.  Shaw.  p.  335. 


36  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

even  were  he  available  and  qualified.  Thus  we  learn  from  the  Old 
Testament  that  when  David  proposed  to  lead  his  armies  in  person, 
he  was  promptly  overruled  and  told  to  stay  at  home.^  His  first 
practical  functions  were  as  Judge  and  Lawgiver,  derived  in  true 
succession  from  the  patriarchal  chief.  At  the  root  of  all  legal  insti- 
tutions is  the  basic  discovery  that  a  verdict  (whether  right  or  wrong) 
is  better  than  an  endless  quarrel.  A  common  primitive  method  of 
settling  a  dispute  was  by  augur  or  ordeal,  with  much  the  same  effect 
as  tossing  a  coin.  The  King's  verdict  might  or  might  not  be  just  but  it 
had  at  least  the  merit  of  being  final.  It  was  the  voice  of  God.  There 
were  kings,  too,  like  Solomon,  with  as  much  reputation  for  justice 
as  for  finality. 

Kings  were  also  lawgivers.  Laws  were  many  of  them,  originally, 
generalisations  based  on  legal  judgments  in  particular  cases.  Osiris 
taught  the  Egyptians  agriculture,  gave  them  laws,  and  instructed 
them  in  the  worship  of  the  gods.  One  of  the  earliest  legal  codes  known 
dates  from  Babylon  (2123-2081  B.C.)  and  is  the  work  of  a  king  and 
god,  Hammurabi,  who  expresses  in  it  the  determination  to  'uphold 
justice  in  the  land',  as  befitted  one  who  was  'High  of  purpose,  great 
King,  a  very  sun  in  Babylon'.^  The  functions  of  lawgiver  and  judge 
were  similarly  identical  in  Egypt.  'During  the  period  of  the  Old 
Kingdom  Egypt  was  governed  by  a  strictly  absolute  monarchy.  The 
king  was  the  sole  legislator'.'^  And  the  laws,  once  issued,  were  the  laws 
of  God. 

In  one  other  respect  the  king  was  extremely  useful  and  that  was  in 
representing  the  unity  of  the  area  he  governed.  This  was  particularly 
important  in  Egypt,  for  example,  where  the  Pharoah  was  always 
separately  King  of  Upper  and  Lower  Egypt.  It  was,  in  fact,  a  dual 
monarchy  of  which  Horus  and  Seth  were  supposed  to  have  been 
rulers.*  There  were  two  separate  administrations  and  two  treasuries. 
The  Empire  of  the  Incas  was  similarly  called  'The-Four-in-One'.  It 
has  been  the  function  of  many  later  monarchies  to  unite  their  terri- 
tories in  this  way.  Apart  from  that,  the  king,  standing  above  the  local 
or  patriarchal  chiefs,  symbolises  his  people  as  a  whole.  They  express 
their  own  unity  in  terms  of  their  allegiance  to  him. 

Of  the  fictions  designed  to  explain  the  king's  death,  the  third  and 
the  most  important  implied  the  presence  of  an  heir  apparent.  It  was 
natural,  if  only  for  that  reason,  that  the  king  should  be  expected  to 
marry.  This  initially  created  a  problem,  for  how  could  a  common 
person  marry  a  god?  The   Egyptians  overcame  this  diflficulty  by 

'  II  Samuel,  18,  verses  2-4. 

-  Babylonian  and  Assyrian  Laws  and  Contracts,  (ed.)  C.  W.  H.  Johns.  Edinburgh,  1904. 
Quoted  in  Western  Political  Thought.  John  Bowie.  London,  1947.  pp.  30-31. 
'  The  Legacy  of  Egypt.  Ed.  -S.  R.  K.  Gianviile.  Oxford,  1942. 
^  Priests  and  Kings.  H.  Peake  and  H.  J.  Fleure.  Oxford,  1927.  p.  171. 


MONARCHY     AMONG     AGRICULTURAL     PEOPLES  37 

making  their  king  marry  his  sister,  a  goddess  in  her  own  right. 
Exactly  the  same  solution  was  found  by  the  Incas  in  South  America. 
Among  them,  the  Emperor,  descended  from  the  Sun  God,  married 
his  eldest  sister  and  designated  as  his  successor  the  ablest  son  by  that 
first  and  principal  wife.^  In  other  parts  of  the  world  the  problem  was 
simplified  by  the  existence  of  other  and  adjacent  kingdoms,  allowing 
the  divinely  descended  king  to  marry  the  daughter  of  another  king, 
regarded  for  this  purpose  only  as  of  almost  equally  divine  descent. 
So  Solomon,  we  learn  'made  affinity  with  Pharaoh  king  of  Egypt, 
and  took  Pharaoh's  daughter  and  brought  her  into  the  city  of 
David"'^ — where,  she  was  presumably  annoyed  to  find,  the  palace  was 
not  even  finished.  Such  a  practice  brought  with  it  the  opportunity, 
on  occasion,  of  marrying  the  only  child  of  another  king  and  so  ending 
as  ruler  of  two  kingdoms  instead  of  one.  As  against  this  interesting 
possibility,  marriage  alliances  might  complicate  foreign  affairs  in  a 
manner  neither  expected  nor  desired. 

The  marriage  consummated,  whether  with  a  sister  or  a  foreign 
royalty,  children  might  be  expected  to  result,  not  merely  the  son 
destined  to  succeed  but  other  sons  and  daughters  as  well.  These  too 
will  marry,  some  of  them  inevitably  with  commoners,  producing 
children  of  partly  royal  descent.  These  are  obvious  candidates  for 
official  office,  for  persons  of  semi-divine  descent  cannot  be  allowed  to 
starve  or  even  to  mingle  on  equal  terms  with  the  common  people. 
As  time  goes  on,  to  be  descended  from  the  gods  becomes  necessarily 
a  characteristic  of  a  wide  and  (widening)  circle  of  relations.  With  a 
king  like  Solomon  on  the  throne  (with  seven  hundred  wi\es  and  three 
hundred  concubines)  the  process  is  likely  to  be  accelerated.  Should  it 
become  necessary,  moreover,  to  promote  some  able  commoner  to  a 
position  higher  than  a  minor  royalty,  he  must  be  given  a  more  than 
equivalent  rank — perhaps  with  that  fictitious  cousinship  which  an 
English  peerage  still  implies.  The  inference  is  that  a  monarchy  by  its 
very  nature  must  create  a  nobility. 

The  officials  seem  to  have  been  originally  relations  of  the  royal 
house.  They  stand  apart  as  a  class — the  Royal  Kinsmen.  In  other 
words,  those  to  whom  power  was  delegated  shared  in  some  degree  the 
mysterious  essence  which  differentiated  the  king  from  all  men.  .  .  . 

As  one  of  her  main  titles  in  the  Old  Kingdom  the  goddess  of  writing, 
Sethat,  had  'Mistress  of  the  Archives  of  the  Royal  Kinsmen',  which 
would  have  been  a  kind  of  register  of  nobility,  for  no  other  hereditary 
nobility  existed.  .  .  .  There  were  no  classes  or  castes  in  Egypt.  All  were 

'  Handbook  of  South  American  Indians.  Ed.  Julian  H.  Steward.  VoL  2.  The  Andean 
Civilisation.  Washington,  1946.  (Smithsonian  Institute).  See  also  The  Origin  and  History 
of  Politics.  W.  C.  MacLeod,  New  York,  1931.  Chapter  VI,  pp.  213-220.  These  royal 
brother-sister  marriages  were  found  elsewhere  in  the  Andes  from  Darien  to  the  south 
of  Peru. 

'  I  Kings,  verse  3. 


38  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

commoners  before  the  throne,  except  those  in  whose  veins  flowed 
some   trace   of  the  royal  blood,  however  diluted.  .  .  .  The  Royal 
Kinsmen  would  have  formed  a  considerable  class. 
...  It  need  not  astonish  us,  therefore,  to  find  Royal  Kinsmen  even  in 
minor  posts  in  the  provincial  administration.^ 

Exactly  the  same  thing  happened  in  Peru  except  for  the  existence 
there  of  other  nobles.  The  result  was  a  nobility  of  two  grades,  the 
superior  of  which  could  trace  their  ancestry  to  a  previous  sovereign. 
As  the  Peruvian  kings  were  polygamous  and  quite  capable  of  be- 
getting up  to  two  hundred  children,  the  number  of  upper-grade  nobles 
was  far  from  negligible.  Much  the  same  thing  happened  even  in 
societies  far  less  advanced  like  that  of  the  Zulu,  in  which  the  king  was 

. . .  head  by  descent  of  the  powerful  aristocratic  Zulu  lineage  which  was 
looked  up  to  by  all  Zulu,  and  his  position  in  the  national  organization 
was  strengthened,  since  tribes  scattered  through  Zululand  were  ruled 
by  his  close  relatives,  who  were  bound  to  him  by  strong  kinship  ties  of 
mutual  assistance  and  by  their  common  membership  of  the  royal 
lineage.- 

In  short,  given  a  monarchy,  a  nobility  is  almost  certain  to  follow. 

However  divinely  sanctioned,  the  Sun  King  could  not  rule  a  larger 
kingdom  than  the  state  of  communications  would  allow.  In  an  age  of 
undeveloped  roads,  the  ideal  kingdom  lay  along  the  banks  of  a 
navigable  river.  The  size  of  the  kingdom  depended  essentially  on  the 
length  of  the  river.  The  kingdoms  of  Egypt,  Mesopotamia  and  India 
owed  much  of  their  importance  to  this.  To  develop  a  kingdom  much 
beyond  these  original  limits  was  something  of  a  technical  achievement, 
requiring  perhaps  (among  other  things)  the  art  of  writing.  In  the 
meanwhile  the  river  kingdom  was  almost  certain  to  develop  a  capital 
and  this  would  bring  with  it  a  whole  series  of  political  needs,  arising 
not  from  religious  belief  but  from  practical  necessity.  Without 
agriculture,  however,  no  city,  no  civilisation,  no  village  even,  would 
have  been  possible. 


'  Kingship  and  the  Gods.  H.  Frankfort,  pp.  52-53.  See  also  Social  Evolution.  V. 
Gordon  Childe.  London,  1951.  p.  61,  on  the  difference  between  the  tombs  of  pharaohs 
and  nobles  as  contrasted  with  those  of  commoners. 

-  African  Political  Systems,  p.  35. 


CHAPTER   II 

Monarchy  among  Pastoral  Peoples 


SOME  people  became  herdsmen  just  as  others  became  cultivators. 
There  are  vast  stretches  of  Arabia,  Palestine  and  Central  Asia 
which  afford  grazing  at  one  time  of  the  year  but  offer  little  or  no 
scope  for  agriculture.  Peoples,  therefore,  who  had  domesticated 
cattle,  sheep,  goats,  camels  and  horses  specialised  in  moving  between 
summer  and  winter  pastures  and  in  covering  long  distances  where  the 
grass  is  scanty.  In  their  way  of  life  they  differed  sharply  from  the 
cultivators,  mainly  in  having  no  one  settled  home.  Whereas  the 
agriculturalist  lived  in  one  place  and  prayed  for  the  rain  to  come  at 
the  proper  time,  the  herdsman  could  go  in  search  of  it.  His  prayers 
and  his  religion  were  not,  therefore,  identical  with  those  of  the  culti- 
vator. Politically  too  he  was  to  develop  on  rather  different  lines. 

We  have  seen  that  the  tendency  of  the  cultivator  was  to  transfer  his 
loyalty  from  the  family  or  kinship  group  to  the  unit  of  neighbourli- 
ness, the  village.  The  revolutionary  nature  of  this  change  must  not  be 
exaggerated.  For  one  thing,  the  sense  of  neighbourhood  must  always 
have  been  there  in  some  degree.  For  another,  the  sense  of  kinship  still 
remained.  Professor  Lowie  has  pointed  out  that  the  two  principles 
existed  in  sixth  century  Athens  and  that  Solon  had  merely  to 
strengthen  the  local  tie  as  being  politically  more  convenient. 

.  .  .  The  basic  problem  of  the  state  is  thus  not  that  of  explaining  the 
somersault  by  which  ancient  peoples  achieved  the  step  from  a  govern- 
ment by  personal  relations  to  one  by  territorial  contiguity  only.  The 
question  is  rather  to  show  what  processes  strengthened  the  local  tie 
which  must  be  recognised  as  not  less  ancient  than  the  rival  principle.^ 

While  some  would  disagree  with  this,  holding  that  the  tie  of  kinship 
is  certainly  the  more  ancient,  it  is  at  least  true  that  the  two  principles 
of  association  co-existed  for  a  long  time,  and  indeed  co-exist  to-day. 
A  Highland  Scotsman's  sense  of  loyalty  to  Clan  Campbell  or  Mac- 
donald  might  even  now  conceivably  outweigh  his  local  patriotism  as 
a  municipal  voter  of  Croydon.  And  while  a  village  life  may  tend  to 
weaken  the  sense  of  kinship,  a  nomadic  life  must  equally  tend  to 
strengthen  it. 

Social  anthropologists  distinguish  two  forms  of  family  relation- 

'  The  Origin  of  the  State.  R.  H.  Lowie.  New  York,  1927. 

39 


40  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

ship;  the  transient  bilateral  family,  which  they  term  the  kinship 
system;  and  the  grouping  of  persons  by  unilateral  descent,  which 
they  term  the  lineage  system.  Only  the  latter,  they  say,  establishes 
corporate  units  with  a  political  function.^  The  Clan,  that  is  to  say, 
does  not  include  relatives  on  the  mother's  side.  It  comprises  only 
persons  with  a  male  ancestor  in  common.  Among  nomadic  peoples  it 
is  the  clan  in  this  sense  which  attracts  the  loyalty  felt  by  the  cultivator 
for  his  village.^  And  the  tribe,  the  political  unit,  is  a  group  of  clans, 
bound  to  each  other  by  blood  and  often  divided  from  other  clans  by 
blood-feuds.  The  Old  Testament  is  essentially  a  tribal  history  and 
although  the  New  Testament  depicts  the  Jews  as  settled  agricul- 
turalists, their  tribal  organization  is  still  in  existence  and  the  descent 
of  each  tribesman  (as  of  Christ  himself)  is  known. 

The  nomad  has  other  characteristics  besides  his  sense  of  kinship  and 
lineage.  He  measures  wealth  in  terms  of  cattle  or  other  stock  and 
wants  few  possessions  unable  to  move  on  four  legs.  He  is  as  unlikely 
to  collect  ohjets  cVart  as  is  a  modern  traveller  by  air.  His  life  includes 
hardship  but  is  one  of  relative  leisure  as  compared  with  the  life  of  the 
peasant.  His  property  is  of  a  kind  subject  to  natural  increase  and  also 
liable  to  a  sudden  diminution,  creating  a  wide  divergence  in  wealth 
between  those  more  and  less  fortunate.  The  owner  of  flourishing  and 
multiplying  herds  will  need  underlings  to  tend  them.  These  he  may 
well  recruit  from  among  other  nomads  whose  herds  have  perished 
from  disease  or  drought.  The  nomad's  property  may  also  be  in- 
creased or  diminished  by  theft.  He  has  reason,  from  time  to  time,  to 
covet  some  of  the  products  of  agriculture.  He  is,  in  general,  an  op- 
ponent of  civilisation. 

As  a  settled  life  is  favourable  to  civiMzation,  so  a  nomadic  life  is  the 
reverse.  ...  By  the  very  nature  of  their  lives  they  are  enemies  of 
building,  which  is  the  first  step  in  civilization.* 

Among  pastoral  peoples,  kingship  is  likely  to  take  a  special  form. 
What  is  demanded  of  their  king  is  leadership — the  direction  needed 
by  a  people  on  the  move.*  An  agricultural  people  cannot  be  led,  for 
they  are  static;  but  pastoral  folk  will  call  their  king  'The  Good 
Shepherd',  a  title  later  adapted  to  Christian  theology.  It  is  hardly 
possible  for  a  king  of  this  sort  to  become  the  almost  invisible  deity 
behind  palace  doors.  He  has  no  palace.  Leading  in  person,  he  must  be 
known  to  all,  a  man  like  other  men  but  with  greater  knowledge  and 
wisdom.  One  way,  incidentally,  in  which  his  knowledge  and  wisdom 
might  appear  is  in  his  greater  wealth.  The  nomad  who  has  gained 

'  See  African  Political  Systems,  p.  6. 

-  Primitive  Society.  R.  H.  Lowie.  London,  1921.  3rd  ed.  1949.  p.  377. 
■'Politics.  Aristotle,  (I),  p.  1319. 

'  See  Habitat,  Economy  and  Society,  a  Geographical  Introduction  to  Ethnology. 
C.  Daryll  Forde.  London;  1934.  p.  408. 


MONARCHY     AMONG     PASTORAL     PEOPLES  41 

some  wealth  by  luck  in  breeding  and  raising  stock  will  turn  readily 
to  trade  as  a  means  of  becoming  wealthier  still.  But  to  be  known  as  a 
good  judge  of  cattle  and  horses  with  a  flair  for  finding  the  best  route  to 
the  best  pasture  at  the  right  time  is  a  very  different  thing  from  being  a 
deity.  In  general,  the  men  who  cross  the  desert  and  sleep  beneath  the 
stars  have  an  intense  belief  in  their  tribal  god,  as  the  Jews  had  in 
Yahweh,  but  they  are  not  much  inclined  to  deify  a  man  who  sleeps 
in  the  next  tent. 

The  herdsmen  whose  migrations  from  one  pasture  to  another  are 
all  within  a  very  limited  area  differ  less  from  the  cultivators  than  do 
the  herdsmen  who  have  further  to  go.  Indeed,  there  are  pastoral 
peoples  who  are  largely  settled  in  one  place,  only  the  shepherds  being 
truly  migrant.  Of  those  with  great  distances  to  cover,  a  majority  lay 
some  sort  of  claim  to  specific  pastures. 

.  .  .  The  steppe-dwellers  know  how  to  make  the  best  use  of  their 
pastures  ...  all  migrations  are  within  the  territory  of  the  tribe,  clan,  or 
family  group,  as  the  case  may  be,  various  parts  of  which  are  occupied 
at  different  times  and  usually  only  for  a  short  period.  Even  in  the  best 
districts  a  move  of  five  to  ten  miles  must  be  made  every  few  weeks. 
The  wanderings  are  never  aimless.  The  pastoralists  know  where  there 
is  water,  and  they  often  visit  certain  pastures  at  a  particular  season. 
Many  of  the  herders  of  Central  Asia  spend  their  winter  in  the  val- 
leys. .  .  .  Their  possession  of  horses  has  given  them  greater  mobility 
than  many  herders,  and  some  of  them  wander  several  hundred  miles 
during  a  year.^ 

The  greater  distances  travelled  are  essentially  due  to  the  domesti- 
cation of  camels  and  horses.  Camels  were  known  in  Babylonia  from 
about  3000  B.C.  but  were  not  numerous  until  a  century  later.  From 
the  beginning,  camels  were  bred  with  a  view  to  improving  their 
special  qualities  of  endurance  and  speed.  It  has  been  pointed  out  that 
'many  a  dromedary  can  boast  a  genealogy  far  longer  than  the 
descendants  of  the  Darley  Arabian'.'^  The  horse  appears  in  Baby- 
lonian records  at  about  the  same  period  as  the  camel  but  may  have 
been  known  in  Mesopotamia  before  that.  Horses  may  first  have  been 
tamed  and  ridden  in  Turkestan,  their  use  spreading  thence  to  the 
Iranian  plateau  and  so  to  Babylon.  They  again  were  carefully  bred, 
their  pedigrees  being  remembered,  and  their  qualities  developed.  The 
introduction  of  camels  and  horses  produced  not  only  a  greater  dis- 
tinction between  herdsmen  and  cultivators  but  also  some  differences 
among  the  herdsmen  themselves.  Some  were  mounted  and  some  were 
not.  In  the  desert,  for  example,  the  true  nomad  divides  the  human 
race  into  two  main  categories,  the  Hayar,  those  who  live  in  permanent 

'  From  Hunter  to  Husbandman.  J.  W.  Page.  London,  1939.  p.  99. 

-In  the  Sahara.  Canon  Tristram.  Quoted  in  From  Hunter  to  Husbandman,  p.  104. 


42  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

houses  and  the  Arab  who  dwell  in  black  tents.  The  arabs  are  further 
divided  into  the  Shwayar,  who  live  on  the  edge  of  the  desert  with 
their  flocks,  and  the  Bedouins  who  breed  camels  and  live  for  ten 
months  of  the  year  in  the  desert.^ 

It  has  been  observed  that,  in  partly  nomadic  tribes,  the  nomads  are 
the  more  vigorous  and  independent  of  the  members.  'The  foremost 
Shaikhs  of  the  Abaidat,  Hasa  .  .  .  etc.,  etc.  .  .  .  are  all  to  be  found 
during  the  rains  farther  away  in  the  steppe  than  most  of  their  fellow- 
tribesmen'.^ 

The  diff"erences  here  described  are  not  merely  divergencies  in 
occupation.  They  represent,  and  have  presumably  always  represented, 
a  series  of  social  gradations.  The  tent-dweller  despises  the  husband- 
man. The  Bedouin  despises  the  mere  Arab.  And  among  the  Bedouin 
it  soon  appears  that  some  tribes  are  superior  to  others.  Thus  we  find, 
in  the  Old  Testament,  that  Saul,  when  chosen  as  king,  protests  'Am  I 
not  a  Benjamite,  of  the  smallest  of  the  tribes  of  Israel?  And  my 
family  the  least  of  all  the  families  of  the  tribe  of  Benjamin?'^  The 
relative  status  of  the  different  tribes  and  families  must  have  been 
perfectly  well  known  and  scarcely  a  matter  of  dispute.  Within  each 
tribe,  moreover,  there  are  strangers  and  fellow-travellers,  regarded  as 
inferior  to  the  tribesmen  themselves.  There  must  be  a  blacksmith,  for 
example,  but  he  is  more  or  less  'untouchable'.  There  are  other 
menials,  camp-followers  and  slaves,  of  seven  or  more  categories  but 
all  socially  beyond  the  pale.  As  against  that,  at  the  other  extreme,  the 
office  of  chief  is  hereditary,  most  likely,  in  the  senior  fine  but  subject 
to  a  necessary  standard  of  ability,  thus  giving  the  elders  of  the  tribe 
a  certain  latitude  in  choosing  one  of  those  eligible  by  birth.  It  should 
be  observed,  incidentally,  that  people  interested  in  the  pedigrees  of 
horses  are  likely  to  show  a  similar  interest  in  the  pedigrees  of  men. 

The  inequalities  so  far  described  as  characteristic  of  nomadic 
peoples  are  partly  the  result  of  good  or  bad  fortune  but  more  the 
result  of  varying  degrees  of  courage.  The  nomad  who  remains  on  the 
fringe  of  the  desert  is  withheld  by  timidity  from  claiming  the  higher 
status  that  would  accompany  a  greater  spirit  of  enterprise.  His  lower 
status  is  thus  voluntarily  assumed,  at  least  in  part,  just  as,  among 
seafaring  peoples,  the  deep-sea  mariner  may  look  down  upon  the 
fisherman  who  in  turn  despises  the  landsman;  each  being  neverthe- 
less content  to  remain  what  he  is.  Among  nomad  riders  of  the  horse 
or  camel  there  arise,  in  addition,  all  the  inequalities  resulting  from 
mounts  being  worse  or  better  and  riders  being  more  or  less  skilled 
and  daring. 

'  A  Reader  in  General  Anthropology.  Carleton  S.  Coon.  London,  1950.  pp.  380-407. 
"  The  Sanusi  of  Cyrenaica.  E.  E.  Evans-Pritchard.  Oxford,  1949.  See  Chapter  II. 
The  Bedouin. 

^  I  Samuel  9,  verse  21. 


MONARCHY     AMONG     PASTORAL     PEOPLES  43 

That  there  is  a  hmit  to  the  size  of  a  pastoral  group  is  manifest. 
However  nomadic  in  character,  the  group,  clan  or  tribe  has  a  well- 
defined  territory,  the  pastures  in  which  will  support  no  more  than  a 
certain  number  of  cattle,  sheep  or  draught  animals.  When  the  pastures 
are  over-grazed,  the  herdsmen  must  either  divide  into  smaller  groups 
or  invade  the  pastures  of  another  tribe.  Disputes  are  likely  to  result 
from  either  policy,  and  the  Old  Testament  contains  one  careful 
explanation  of  how  one  such  quarrel  arose: — 

.  .  .  And  Abram  was  very  rich  in  cattle  .  .  .  and  Lot  also,  which  went 
with  Abram,  had  flocks,  and  herds,  and  tents.  And  the  land  was  not 
able  to  bear  them,  that  they  might  dwell  together:  for  their  substance 
was  great.  .  .  .  And  there  was  a  strife  between  the  herdmen  of  Abram's 
cattle  and  the  herdmen  of  Lot's  cattle.  .  .  .^ 

The  immediate  solution  in  this  instance  was  for  Abram  and  Lot  to 
separate,  Abram  going  to  Canaan  and  Lot  to  the  plain  of  Jordan; 
but  not  every  dispute  would  end  as  amicably,  nor  was  that  agreement 
free  from  the  risk  that  each  of  the  two  groups  might  become  em- 
broiled with  another  tribe. 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  it  was  the  pastoral  peoples  who 
proved  most  quarrelsome. 

.  .  .  The  grain-grower  is  usually  too  much  absorbed  in  cultivating  his 
land  to  have  any  interests  outside  it,  and  such  fights  as  he  indulges  in 
are  not  of  his  seeking.  Though  the  most  peaceful  and  long-suflFering 
of  men,  they  resent  ravages  on  their  fields,  and  even  in  quite  early 
days  seem  to  have  come  to  blows  with  the  pastoral  tribes  on  their 
borders,  whose  beasts  invaded  and  devoured  their  growing  crops. 
We  have  a  hint  of  one  such  episode  in  the  story  of  Cain  and  Abel, 
told  by  the  partisans  of  the  latter,  so  that  in  the  story  a?  it  has  reached 
us  no  mention  is  made  of  the  damage  done  by  AbeFs  sheep  among  the 
crops  of  Cain.  .  .  .' 

It  is  probably  an  exaggeration  to  assert  that  agricultural  peoples  are 
invariably  peace-loving,  but  it  is  clear  that  pastoral  peoples  have 
more  occasion  for  dispute,  both  among  themselves  and  also  with  their 
more  settled  neighbours.  There  might  be  competition  for  the  earliest 
grass  in  spring  or  the  latest  grass  in  autumn.  There  might  be  strife 
over  a  spring  or  a  well.  There  might,  finally,  be  a  season  of  drought 
during  which  the  crops  of  the  cultivator  would  become  a  standing 
temptation. 

It  is  not  pastoralism  and  cultivation  as  such  that  face  each  other  in 
hostility,  but  mobility  with  poverty  as  against  sessile  and  vulnerable 
wealth.  .  .  . 

'  Genesis  1  3,  verse  2. 

■  Early  Steps  in  Human  Progress.  Harold  Peake.  London,  1933.  p.  229. 


44  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITrCAL     THOUGHT 

The  essential  point,  so  far  as  relations  with  cultivators  are  con- 
cerned, is  that  a  pastoral  people,  especially  if  equipped  with  riding 
animals,  has  a  superior  mobility  which,  although  it  may  at  a  given 
time  be  latent,  is  always  there  as  an  asset  when  there  is  opportunity  for 
gain,  and  equally  when  there  is  need  for  retreat.  .  .  ^ 

It  was  most  probably  among  the  pastoral  peoples  that  conflict  first 
began  on  such  a  scale  as  to  merit  the  name  of  war.  And  war,  when  it 
came,  had  a  great  influence  on  the  institution  of  Monarchy. 


'  Habitat,  Economy  and  Society,  a  Geof;rapl.ical  Introduction  to  Ethnology.  C.  Daryll 
Forde.  London,  1934.  pp.  405-407. 


CHAPTER    III 

The  Implications  of  War 


THERE  are  reasons,  as  we  have  seen,  for  supposing  that  war 
originated  among  the  nomads.  ProbabiHties  apart,  moreover, 
it  was  commonly  believed  in  ancient  times  that  this  was  so.  Aristotle 
points  out  that  'A  pastoral  people  is  the  best  trained  for  war,  sturdy 
in  physique  and  used  to  camping  out'.^  Even  more  to  the  point,  an 
Arab  historian  writes  as  follows: — 

Since  conquests  are  achieved  only  by  dash  and  daring,  a  people 
accustomed  to  the  nomadic  life  and  the  rough  manners  engendered  by 
the  desert  can  readily  conquer  a  more  civilized  people,  even  though 
the  latter  be  more  numerous  and  equally  strong  in  communal  spirit. .  .  . 
Having  no  country  where  they  live  in  the  enjoyment  of  plenty,  they 
have  no  tie  to  bind  them  to  their  birthplace.  All  lands  alike  seem  good 
to  them.  Not  content  with  lordship  among  their  own  folk  and  over 
their  neighbours,  they  overpass  the  bounds  of  their  country  to  invade 
distant  lands  and  subdue  their  inhabitants.  .  .  .- 

All  this  is  true  enough;  and  if  we  go  further  and  ask  what  are  the 
special  qualities  of  a  good  soldier  we  shall  find  that  the  qualities  of 
the  nomad  are  much  the  same.  We  would  instance  physical  toughness, 
physical  courage,  laziness  (with  a  capacity  for  energy  when  needed), 
the  ruthlessness  which  comes,  somehow,  from  a  life  of  movement  in 
the  open  air,^  no  tendency  to  be  homesick,  a  certain  cunning  but  no 
excess  of  brains,  a  great  care  for  horses  but  none  for  standing  crops  or 
buildings,  a  robust  common  sense,  a  singleness  of  purpose  and  a 
strictly  limited  imagination — all  these  are  the  qualities  of  the  nomad. 
If  there  were  no  other  evidence  shedding  light  on  the  origins  of  war, 
we  could  still  say  that  the  nomadic  peoples  had  the  character,  the 
means  and  the  motive. 

War,  as  opposed  to  inter-tribal  bickering,  depends  upon  transport 
facilities.  The  peoples  of  Babylon  and  Sumeria  had  the  camel,  the  ass 
and  the  wheeled  vehicle  by  some  period  round  about  3000  B.C. 
Although  Sargon  of  Agade's  conquest  of  Sumeria  (perhaps  round 
about  2750  B.C.)  is  the  first  large-scale  war  of  which  we  have  record, 

'  Politics.  1.  p.  1319. 

-  In  Quest  of  Civilization.  Ronald  Latham.  London,  1946. 

^  As  Kinglake  remarks  in  Eothen.  See  Kinglake's  Eothen.  Ed.  by  D.  G.  Hogarth. 
London,  1925.  p.  28. 

45 


46  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

it  is  probable  that  there  were  previous  wars  among  the  Semitic 
tribes  of  Syria  and  Arabia.^  But  while  an  army  of  nomad  or  partly 
nomad  origin,  with  driven  herds  of  cattle,  sheep  and  goats,  and  with 
vehicles  drawn  by  oxen  or  asses,  has  sufficient  mobility  for  war,  its 
speed  remains  pedestrian.  The  acceleration  of  war  begins  with  the 
introduction  of  the  horse. 

The  horse  in  earliest  use  was  the  tarpan,  a  small  animal  of  the 
Shetland  pony  type,  found  wild  in  the  steppe  country  between  the 
Dnieper  and  the  Altai.-  These  had  been  domesticated  and  saddled 
by  2500  B.C.  and  were  in  use  from  the  Caucasus  to  the  Indus  Valley. 
They  gave  an  added  mobility  in  war  but  were  too  small  to  mount  a 
heavily  equipped  rider.  They  began  to  prove  their  real  value  when  they 
replaced  the  ass  in  drawing  the  war-chariot.  By  means  of  the  chariot, 
four  horses  (or  more)  could  be  made  to  carry  two  men,  one  of  them 
heavily  armed.  The  dreaded  war-chariot  (of  which  the  first  descrip- 
tion dates  from  2000  B.C.)  spread  as  a  standard  weapon  of  war  from 
the  steppe  country  to  Mesopotamia,  Assyria,  Persia,  India,  Tibet, 
China  and  Europe.  The  Babylonians  learnt  to  respect  the  'wild  ass  of 
the  mountains'  and  the  pastoral  Amorites,  who  centred  their  empire 
on  Babylon,  used  their  war  chariots  to  invade  and  conquer  Egypt  in 
about  2100  B.C.,  setting  up  there  a  new  dynasty  of  the  Hyksos 
or  'shepherd  kings'.  What  impressed  the  Egyptians  (to  whom  the 
horse  was  a  novelty)  was  the  speed  with  which  the  campaign 
ended. 

God  was  adverse  to  us,  and  there  came  out  of  the  East  in  an  extra- 
ordinary manner  men  of  ignoble  race,  who  had  the  temerity  to  invade 
our  country,  and  easily  subdued  it  by  force  without  a  battle. 
(Manetho).^ 

Once  the  Egyptians  had  learnt  how  to  use  horse-drawn  war- 
chariots,  they  regained  their  freedom  in  about  1600  B.C. 

The  next  stage  in  the  development  of  the  horse  was  apparently  the 
crossing  of  the  tarpan  with  another  breed  of  horse,  perhaps  native  to 
Libya  or  Persia.^  A  type  of  horse  was  eventually  produced  which 
could  be  ridden  to  battle  (though  not  at  first  into  battle)  by  a  single 
archer.  For  centuries,  meanwhile,  both  chariots  and  horsemen  were 
to  be  seen  on  the  battlefield.  The  earliest  known  detailed  account  of  a 
battle  relates  to  that  of  Megiddo  in  about  1479  B.C.  The  conflict  was 
between  Thothmes  III  of  Egypt  and  a  group  of  Asian  princes  gathered 
in  Palestine.  We  have  the  account  of  a  council  of  war,  an  advance  by 

'  Wars  of  Sumer  and  Akkad  are  supposed  to  have  taken  place  in  about  2961  b.c. 
See  Priests  and  Kings.  H.  Peake  and  H.  J.  Fleure.  Oxford,  1927.  p.  48. 

-  Communicalion  has  been  established.  A.J.  H.  Goodwin.  London,  1937.  See  Chapter 
.3,  esp.  pp.  47-48. 

^  Ancient  History  of  the  Near  East.  p.  214. 

'  See  Empire  and  Comnninications.  Prof.  H.  A.  Innis.  Oxford,  1950. 


THE     IMPLICATIONS     OF     WAR  47 

the  obvious  and  therefore  unexpected  route,  a  deployment  before 
battle,  the  engagement  and  victory,  the  pursuit  and  the  capture  of 
Megiddo  itself.  Before  the  battle  the  King  overruled  his  captains  and 
led  the  army  in  person,  his  troops  following  'horse  behind  horse'. 
When  the  battle  was  joined  the  King  fought  'in  a  chariot  of  electron, 
arrayed  with  his  weapons  of  war,  like  Horus,  the  Smiter,  lord  of 
power'.'  The  enemy  (not  unnaturally)  fled  'abandoning  their  horses 
and  their  chariots  of  gold  and  silver'.  When  the  walled  town  of 
Megiddo  fell  as  a  consequence  of  the  victory,  the  loot  included  924 
chariots,  200  suits  of  armour,  flocks  and  herds,  and  the  reaping  of  the 
local  harvest.  From  this  narrative  it  is  apparent  that  fighting  strength 
was  counted  in  chariots,  that  the  leaders  at  least  had  elaborate 
armour,  that  the  king  might  command  in  person  and  that  the  God 
Horus  had  become  a  God  of  War. 

The  Old  Testament  account  of  Pharaoh's  pursuit  of  the  Israelites 
dates  from  a  rather  later  period  but  presents  a  similar  picture. 
Pharaoh  had  horsemen  in  addition  to  his  600  chariots  but  the 
Israelites  had  neither.-  They  evidently  fought  at  this  period  under  a 
considerable  disadvantage,  being  told  to  make  the  best  of  it.  'When 
thou  goest  out  to  battle  against  thine  enemies,  and  seest  horses  and 
chariots,  and  a  people  more  than  thou,  be  not  afraid  of  them  .  .  .  .'^ 
This  sort  of  exhortation  remained  familiar  to  them  during  the  time  of 
Saul  and  David — the  Philistines  being  able  to  muster  30,000  chariots 
and  6,000  horsemen^ — and  it  was  not  until  the  time  of  Solomon 
(c.  960  B.C.)  that  the  Israelites  were  similarly  equipped  with  horses 
purchased  in  Egypt.  They  could  then  muster  1,400  chariots  and  12,000 
horsemen.^  At  the  end  of  the  captivity  in  Babylon  the  Jewish  tribes- 
men numbered  over  42,000  but  could  muster  only  736  horses  and 
435  camels  as  against  nearly  7,000  asses  and  mules.  Horses  were 
evidently  reserved  for  war.  The  Assyrian  army  included  mounted 
archers  in  800  B.C.  but  each  of  these  needed  a  groom  to  hold  the 
horse's  bridle  while  the  bow  was  drawn — a  loss  both  of  mobility  and 
man-power.  No  horseman  used  a  weapon  other  than  a  bow;  nor, 
without  a  stirrup,  would  this  have  been  possible. 

The  technique  of  chariot  warfare  seems  to  have  been  much  the 
same  everywhere.  One  man  fought  and  the  other  managed  the 
horses. 

And  a  certain  man  drew  a  bow  at  a  venture,  and  smote  the  King  of 
Israel  between  the  joints  of  the  harness;  wherefore  he  said  unto  the 

^  Ancient  History  of  the  Near  East.  pp.  236-239. 
'  Exodus.  14. 

'  Deuteronomy,  20,  which  comprises  the  Jewish  Field  Service  Regulations  of  the 
period. 

'  To  quote  the  war  correspondents  of  the  defeated  side. 

=  I  Kings.  10.  David  had  a  hundred  chariots  only.  See  II  Samuel  8,  verse  4. 


48  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

driver  of  his  chariot,  Turn  thine  hand,  and  carry  me  out  of  the  host; 
for  I  am  wounded.  .  .  .^ 

In  India,  according  to  one  authority,  the  king  drove  the  chariot 
himself,  but  this  was  apparently  to  make  room  for  his  principal 
religious  adviser  whose  prayers  had  to  accompany  every  process 
from  harnessing  the  horses  to  shooting  off  his  arrows.''  We  learn  that 
some  chariots  of  later  design  carried  a  crew  of  three,  which  would 
certainly  be  advisable  so  long  as  a  chief  Brahman  had  to  be  one  of 
them.  Chariots  are  mentioned  frequently  in  the  Iliad.  They  were  used 
for  war  in  places  as  distant  from  each  other  as  China  and  Britain. 
Before  they  could  be  replaced  by  real  cavalry,  two  further  steps  in 
progress  were  necessary.  First  of  these  was  the  breeding  of  larger 
horses.  Second  of  these  was  the  invention  of  the  stirrup. 

The  breed  of  horses  was  improved  mainly  by  the  Arabs  but  the 
stirrup  was  apparently  invented  in  China.  It  was  the  people  of  Ch'in 
or  Ts'in,  living  in  the  mountains  of  the  upper  Hoang-Ho,  who  first 
acquired  horses  to  ride  and  iron  weapons  instead  of  bronze.  They 
conquered  the  rest  of  China  without  much  difficulty  between  350  and 
220  B.C.  and  established  an  empire  in  which  good  roads  and  fast 
horses  played  an  important  part.  It  was  not,  however,  until  long 
afterwards,  in  the  sixth  century  a.d.  that  the  use  of  the  stirrup  spread 
from  China  to  the  Middle  East,  transforming  all  warfare  and  making 
cavalry  supreme  on  the  battlefield  for  many  centuries  to  come.^ 
Given  stirrups,  the  horseman  could  fight  without  dismounting,  taking 
the  shock  of  battle,  wielding  the  sword  and  then  the  lance.  Behind 
the  whole  epic  of  the  Crusades  there  lies  a  story  of  horse-breeding 
and  horsemanship.  From  it  there  emerges  the  idea  of  chivalry. 
Europeans  have  tended  to  assume  that  the  Saracens  learnt  the  eti- 
quette of  war  from  the  Crusaders.  This  is  the  reverse  of  the  truth.  The 
custom  of  sparing  the  disarmed,  the  wounded,  the  unhorsed,  the 
women  and  children  comes  essentially  from  the  desert  peoples  of  the 
Arab  type. 

There  are  peoples  who  after  a  fight  spare  their  defeated  adversaries 
without  enslaving  them.  The  different  tribes  of  the  Arab  stock  have  the 
reputation  of  showing  their  enemies  remarkable  clemency  after  a 
victorious  fight.  Regarding  the  Bedouins  of  the  Euphrates  it  is  said 
to  be  the  property  of  the  enemy  and  not  his  person  which  is  the  object 
of  the  fighting.  The  person  of  the  enemy  is  sacred  when  disarmed  or 
dismounted;  and  prisoners  are  neither  enslaved  nor  held  to  other 
ransom  than  their  mares.*  This  purpose  is  attained  by  merely  dis- 

'  I  Kings,  22. 

■  The  VecUc  Age.  Ed.  by  R.  C.  Majumdar.  London,  195 L  p.  484. 

'  Communication  has  been  established.  A.  J.  H.  Goodwin.  London,  1937.  p.  48  et.  seq. 

'  Among  the  steppe  tribes,  the  leaders  used  to  ride  geldings  but  the  custom  in  the 
Middle  East  was  different,  the  warrior  riding  a  mare,  his  followers  having  geldings, 
mules  or  asses.  See  p.  50.  Communication  has  been  established.  A.  J.  H.  Goodwin. 
London,  1937. 


THE     IMPLICATIONS     OF     WAR  49 

mounting  or  wounding  the  enemy.  The  latter's  arms  and  mare  become 
the  property  of  the  victor,  and  he  himself  is  then  let  go.  ...  It  is 
contrary  to  the  Arab  conscience  to  extinguish  a  kabila  (tribe).  .  .  .' 

The  customs  of  the  Ruala  Bedouins  were  not  necessarily  those  of 
all  Arabs  nor  were  they  displayed,  of  necessity,  towards  those  not  of 
Arab  stock.  Thus  Jeremiah  wrote  of  the  nomads  'They  lay  hold  on 
bow  and  spear;  they  are  cruel  and  have  no  mercy;  their  voice  roareth 
like  the  sea  and  they  ride  upon  horses'.^  It  was  strictly  towards  other 
horsemen  that  their  clemency  was  shown  and  chivalry  is  strictly  the 
right  word  for  it.  But  chivalry,  in  the  sense  of  sparing  opponents,  is 
clearly  a  desert  attitude  of  mind,  closely  connected  with  desert  laws 
of  hospitality.  The  main  enemy  (as  well  as  friend)  is  the  desert  itself, 
as  against  which,  in  its  more  dangerous  aspect,  all  are  allied.  The  host 
who  shares  his  provisions  with  a  stranger  may  soon  afterwards  be 
himself  the  guest.  And  where  all  tribesmen  are  running  similar  risks 
there  is  a  fellow  feeling  for  others  whose  predicament  is  the  same  and 
an  equally  shared  contempt  for  those  who  are  running  no  risk  at  all. 
Similar  customs  are  found  among  sailors  and  mountaineers.  The 
rescue  of  survivors  at  sea  has  always  extended,  in  some  degree,  to 
rivals  or  opponents;  and  even  a  hostile  seaman  deserves  more  respect 
than  the  mere  landlubber.  In  similar  fashion,  the  cavalry  elite  of  an 
army  which  includes  a  despised  infantry  (not  to  mention  mere  camp- 
followers)  has  much  in  common  with  the  cavalry  on  the  other  side."^ 
The  fighting  may  be  real  enough  but  will  tend  to  fall  short  of  total 
warfare.  Neither  group  will  fight  to  the  point  of  mutual  extermination 
for  all  are  agreed  that  a  future  battle,  without  cavalry,  would  be  no 
better  than  a  vulgar  brawl. 

With  these  origins  and  aspects  of  war  clearly  in  mind  we  shall  find 
that  the  political  implications  of  war  are  not  far  to  seek.  To  begin 
with,  war  demands  leadership.  Among  pastoral  peoples  the  leader- 
ship is  already  there.  In  an  agricultural  land,  ruled  by  a  king  of  mainly 
religious  and  ceremonial  importance,  the  leader  must  be  found. 
Either  the  king  must  descend  from  his  pedestal  and  assume  a  different 
kind  of  power  (losing  his  godlike  aloofness  in  the  process)  or  else 
another  leader  must  be  appointed,  assuming  an  authority  which  a 
king  might  view  with  some  alarm.  There  are  instances  of  either  policy 
being  preferred  but  seldom  has  the  need  for  a  single  leader  been 
seriously  questioned.  In  war,  as  people  realised  from  the  beginning, 
it  is  usually  better  to  decide  something,  even  mistakenly,  than  to  argue 

'  The  Origin  of  the  Inequality  of  the  Social  Classes.  G.  Landtman.  London,  1938.  p.  3. 

-Jeremiah,  6,  verse  23. 

'  The  Indians,  in  estimating  the  strength  of  an  army  counted  one  chariot  as  equal  to 
one  elephant,  three  cavalry-men  or  five  infantry.  The  Indian  rules  of  warfare  also 
enjoined  the  soldier  to  spare  the  timid,  the  intoxicated,  the  insane,  the  negligent,  the 
unprepared,  the  aged,  women,  children  and  Brahmans.  To  this  list  Gautama  is  said  to 
have  added  ambassadors  and  cows. 


50  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

for  long  as  to  what  is  best.  So  the  first  effect  of  war  is  to  transform 
the  character  of  kingship.  The  king  who  leads  his  army  in  person 
becomes  something  less  than  a  god  but  gains  enormously  in  actual 
authority;  provided  always  that  the  war  is,  or  can  be  made  to  appear, 
victorious.  The  king  who,  like  David  'stood  by  the  gate  side,  and  all 
the  people  came  out  by  hundreds  and  by  thousands'/  might  the 
better  survive  defeat  but  would  lose  much  executive  power  in  the 
course  of  the  war.  After  victory  he  might  well  have  to  listen  to  his 
subjects  cheering  someone  else. 

The  next  implication  of  war  concerns  rather  the  people  themselves. 
For  they  gain  in  war  a  sense  of  unity,  born  of  common  fears  and 
hatreds,  strengthened  by  common  privations,  efforts,  disasters  and 
triumphs.  The  king  is  made  the  symbol  of  that  unity  but,  in  his 
absence,  (and  he  could  not  be  everywhere)  the  sense  of  unity  finds 
expression  in  his  flag  or  standard.  At  the  same  time  the  fortification 
of  cities  strengthens  a  local  sense  of  unity.  And  walled  cities,  being 
more  compact  and  defined,  become  more  urban  in  character;  further 
removed  from  the  rural  and  more  self-consciously  civilised. 

With  this  new  emphasis,  however,  on  group  loyalties,  tribal  or 
local,  comes  the  growth  of  class  distinctions.  Monarchy  creates  a 
nobility  in  any  case  but  it  is  war  that  adds  to  its  numbers,  prestige  and 
influence.  An  army  must  be  officered  and  not  solely  by  the  king's 
relatives.  There  will  grow  up,  during  a  war,  a  class  of  nobles  whose 
authority  is  based  not  upon  religion,  magic,  seniority  or  birth  but 
upon  experience,  ability,  determination  and  courage.  These  nobles 
are  to  be  distinguished  from  the  common  people  by  their  superior 
arms  and  armour,  by  their  chariots  and,  at  a  later  date,  by  their 
horses.  The  fact  of  being  mounted  makes  a  revolution  in  outlook  both 
in  the  rider  and  in  his  inferiors.  The  horseman  is  higher  from  the 
ground,  sees  farther,  travels  faster.  The  change  in  outlook  might 
almost  be  compared  with  that  brought  about  when  man  first  stood  on 
his  hind  legs.  The  horseman  is  literally  looked  up  to.  He  in  turn 
literally  looks  down  upon  other  folk,  and  over  them  towards  things 
more  remote.  He  feels  more  than  his  unmounted  self  and,  even  when 
he  is  on  foot,  his  boots,  breeches  and  spurs  have  about  them  a 
fingering  hint  of  authority,  daring  and  privilege.  He  enjoys  more 
respect  than  envy  for  even  in  time  of  peace  he  takes  more  risks  than 
humbler  folk  are  always  ready  to  incur.  Hence,  in  many  languages, 
the  word  for  horseman  has  much  the  same  significance  as  'gentle- 
man'. The  Roman  Equestrian  had  a  certain  rank  in  society.  Since 
then  we  have  Knight,  Knecht,  Cavalier,  Chevalier,  Caballero  and 
other  such  titles.  Even  in  the  British  army,  riding  boots,  leggings  and 
spurs  lingered  for  a  time  after  horses  had  become  scarce.  Even  in 

'  II  Samuel,  18,  verse  4. 


THE     IMPLICATIONS     OF     WAR  51 

India  jodhpurs  are  worn  by  statesmen  and  diplomatists  whose  duties 
are,  in  fact,  sedentary.  And  if  modern  drivers  of  tanks  still  insist  upon 
their  theoretical  status  as  cavalrymen,  the  riding  boot  played  a  still 
greater  part  among  the  non-riding  adherents  of  Mussolini  and 
Hitler. 

From  war  is  derived  the  epic,  the  saga,  the  tale  of  heroism.  While 
it  was  the  King  (beyond  question)  who  terrified  the  enemy  and  won 
the  battle,  other  men  sometimes  distinguished  themselves;  occasion- 
ally, even,  when  the  king  was  not  there.  They  behaved,  it  became 
clear,  in  a  godhke  manner.  So  they  must,  it  seems,  be  gods  or  des- 
cendants of  the  gods.  Thus  there  developed  a  new  source  of  nobility. 
These  god-descended  heroes — whose  deeds,  recorded  in  song  and 
verse,  lost  nothing  in  the  telling — these  men  who  had  slain  lions, 
tigers,  dragons  and  giants — were  not  to  be  confused  henceforth  with 
the  common  herd.  And  if  they  were  descended  from  the  gods,  other 
people  were  descended  from  them.  While  some  men's  reputations 
might  suffer  during  a  war,  others  rose  to  the  status  of  the  god-des- 
cended, the  equestrian,  the  noble. 

Other  poHtical  implications  of  war  include  the  subordination  of 
women  and  efforts  to  ensure  their  chastity  in  the  absence  of  warrior 
husbands  and  in  the  presence  of  other  warriors  whose  administrative 
duties  have  kept  them  out  of  the  actual  fighting.  Nor  must  we  forget 
that  the  capture  of  prisoners  creates  or  extends  the  institution  of 
slavery.  War  also  induces  people  to  copy  each  other,  and  more 
especially  the  enemy,  whose  uniform  and  equipment  is  always 
superior.  From  war,  finally,  we  inherit  a  grisly  legacy  of  taxation. 
Horses,  chariots  and  arms  have  to  be  paid  for.  Taxes  bring  with  them 
all  the  attendant  horrors  of  arithmetic,  estimates,  assessments  and 
accounts.  War  is  thus  accompanied  by  and  largely  responsible  for  a 
vastly  more  complicated  administration.  Maps  must  be  drawn  and 
distances  estimated.  Someone  must  calculate  what  provision  to  make 
for  so  many  men  and  horses  over  a  given  number  of  days.  Someone 
must  discover  how  many  men  are  sick  and  how  many  still  on  parade. 
People  must  be  taught  something  of  elementary  hygiene,  invented 
probably  by  Moses.  War,  if  successful,  will  imply  the  conquest  of  new 
territory  with  consequent  problems  of  distance,  communications, 
fortification,  military  government  and  taxes.  And  the  wider  the  area 
conquered  the  more  complex  its  administration  will  become. 

In  administration  the  basic  need  is  for  writing.  The  first  cuneiform 
writing  was  apparently  the  invention  of  the  Sumerians  in  about 
3500  B.C.  The  Egyptian  hieroglyphic  existed,  however,  before  3000 
B.C.  Chinese  writing  may  date  from  2000  b.c.  or  thereabouts  and  is  the 
only  pictorial  writing  still  used.  There  are  obvious  limitations  to  the 
value  of  any  ideographic  script  and  the  great  step  forward  (after  that 


52  THE     KVOl  UTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

of  writing  itself)  was  the  invention  of  the  phonetic  alphabet  of  twenty- 
two  letters,  at  first  without  the  vowels.  This  was  the  North  Semitic 
alphabet,  probably  invented  in  Syria  between  2000  and  1500  B.C.; 
the  script  from  which,  via  the  Phoenicians,  the  Greek  and  Roman 
alphabets  derived.  The  later  and  more  effective  method  of  writing 
dates  from  the  period  during  which  wars  became  fashionable  and 
from  the  area  in  which  some  of  the  earliest  recorded  campaigns  took 
place.  This  may  be  coincidence.  It  is  worth  recalling,  however,  that 
administration,  writing  and  bureaucracy  are  all  closely  connected 
with  each  other  and  that  the  earlier  (and  more  difficult)  writing  tends 
to  remain  the  accomplishment  of  a  priestly  class  to  which  admin- 
istrative work  might  often  fall,  if  one  result  of  war  might  be  to  estab- 
lish or  strengthen  a  nobility  of  the  sword,  another  result  might  well  be 
to  establish  a  second  nobility — of  the  pen. 


CHAPTER    IV 

Monarchy  and  Nationalism 


WE  have  traced  authority  in  human  affairs  to  the  elder  person, 
the  parent,  the  patriarch  of  a  family  group,  the  chief  of  a 
tribe.  We  have  seen  that  the  authority  of  the  chief  is  sometimes 
paralleled  by  the  authority  of  the  magician  or  priest.  There  is  reason, 
we  have  found,  to  suspect  that  kingship  arises,  in  agrarian  states, 
from  one  person  managing  to  combine  the  powers  of  chief  and 
magician.  In  pastoral  societies  we  have  noted  a  different  conception 
of  kingship,  based  upon  the  powers  of  a  chief  who  is  essentially  a 
leader  of  men,  not  aloof  and  godlike  but  active,  skilful,  well-mounted 
and  rich.  War  arises  and  leads,  not  infrequently,  to  the  less  warlike 
peasants  being  attacked  by  the  nomads.  A  nomad  conquest  of  an 
agrarian  people  is  a  fairly  common  event,  the  result  being  to  impose 
pastoral  rulers  upon  an  agricultural  society.  Egypt  provides  perhaps 
the  classic  example  of  this;  and  there,  as  elsewhere,  the  views  (on 
monarchy)  of  the  conquered  proved  more  important,  in  the  long  run, 
than  the  views  of  the  conquerors.  Like  the  Roman  Emperors  who 
later  assumed  the  same  office,  the  Shepherd  Kings  found  themselves 
stiffening  into  the  hieratic  attitude  apparently  expected  of  them. 
Something  like  mummification  set  in  even  while  the  king  lived.  And 
it  was  Egypt  that  provided  a  pattern  of  monarchy  for  the  rest  of  the 
world. 

Monarchy,  as  thus  established  and  spread  afterwards  by  conquest 
or  imitation,  comprised  four  distinct  elements.  The  king  had, 
basically,  the  paternal  authority  of  the  tribal  or  district  chief;  he  was 
the  arbitrator  in  cases  of  dispute,  the  father  of  his  people.  To  this  he 
had  added  the  authority  of  the  priest,  the  god-descended  immortal, 
the  embodiment  of  god  and  (finally)  the  god  on  earth.  But  if  the  king 
himself  came  of  a  pastoral  and  nomadic  people,  he  would  also  be  the 
active  leader,  administrator  and  judge.  If,  finally,  his  power  had  been 
established  and  maintained  by  war,  he  would  be  the  supreme  com- 
mander in  the  field,  experienced,  skilful,  daring  and,  above  all, 
victorious.  It  is  fairly  clear  that  monarchy  reaches  its  purest  form  when 
a  king  contrives  to  accumulate  and  retain  all  these  different  powers, 
paternal,  religious,  active  and  warlike.  It  is  at  least  equally  clear  that 
these  different  functions  are  partly  inconsistent  with  each  other.  The 
active  leader  in  matters  of  policy  is  not  the  ideal  arbitrator  in  matters 

53 


54  THE     EVOLUTION    OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

of  dispute.  The  enthroned  king,  immovable  under  the  weight  of 
crown  and  robes,  high  above  his  prostrate  court,  would  seem  in- 
congruous in  the  tented  field.  The  war  leader,  on  the  other  hand,  can 
scarcely  exact  a  religious  veneration  from  comrades  who  know  him 
to  be  a  man  like  themselves.  Kings  who  have  striven  for  the  maximum 
authority  have  sought  to  strike  a  balance  between  their  several  roles, 
the  predominant  role  being  decided  in  part  by  personality  but  more 
perhaps  by  the  nature  of  the  problem  they  had  to  solve. 

Vital  to  this  problem  is  the  factor  of  distance.  When  an  empire  is 
vast  and  varied,  it  was  literally  impossible  (before  the  era  of  tele- 
vision) for  the  king  to  make  himself  personally  known,  as  judge  and 
leader,  to  any  considerable  number  of  his  subjects.  Even  if  he  did, 
he  would  return  from  his  travels  to  find  that  actual  power  had  fallen 
(perhaps  irrevocably)  into  the  hands  of  a  minister,  secretary  or 
brother.  To  maintain  personal  rule  over  a  large  empire  the  king  would 
have  to  be  everywhere  at  once.  As  this  was  impracticable  for  a  man, 
the  king  had  to  make  himself  a  god,  present  in  spirit  wherever  his 
altar  might  be  set  up.  Perhaps  the  most  long-lived  of  monarchies 
have  been  of  this  type,  gaining  in  permanence  for  what  they  may  have 
lost  in  vitality.  The  tendency  is,  however,  for  such  a  monarchy  to  lose 
all  but  nominal  power,  especially  during  a  king's  minority,  and  turn 
gradually  into  an  elaborate  pageant  behind  which  the  actual  govern- 
ment is  done  by  others.  A  king  who  sees  the  danger  of  this  may  choose 
rather  the  role  of  military  leader,  keeping  the  substance  of  power  and 
resigning  something  of  the  shadow.  By  the  end  of  a  life  spent  on  the 
threatened  frontiers,  he  too  will  find  that  the  central  administration 
has  been  taken  over  by  someone  else.  The  final  experiments  in 
monarchy  tend  to  show  that  a  large  and  diverse  empire  requires  a 
more  or  less  deified  king,  and  that  the  kings  most  successful  in 
retaining  real  authority  have  ruled  over  smaller  and  more  compact 
areas;  the  sort  of  territories  exemplified  in  the  modern  national 
state. 

Perhaps  the  best  example  of  a  successful  monarchy  established  over 
a  wide  area  and  yet  wielding  considerable  powers  can  be  taken  from 
the  history  of  China.  Here  the  process  was  assisted  by  a  measure  of 
geographical  unity  and  isolation,  without  which  stability  might  have 
been  more  difficult  to  maintain.  China,  at  any  rate,  aff'ords  the  spec- 
tacle of  a  semi-deified  monarchy  wielding  eff'ective  power  over  diverse 
peoples  and  for  considerable  periods  of  time.  Chinese  civilisation  had 
developed  in  a  China  of  conflicting  states,  no  one  of  which  mastered 
the  rest  until  about  200  B.C.  The  Ch'in  or  Ts'in  people,  who  first 
learnt  to  ride  and  use  iron  weapons,  were  reorganised  as  a  centralised 
monarchy  as  from  about  350  B.C.  and  found  no  other  state  capable 
of  prolonged  rivalry.   'To  a  steel  tool  of  extreme  precision  was 


MONARCHY     AND     NATIONALISM  55 

opposed  a  corrupt  mass  of  crumbling  states  torn  by  internecine 
strife'.^  Shih  Huang-Ti  made  himself  emperor,  assumed  a  divine  title, 
abolished  the  feudal  states,  reorganised  China  into  thirty-six 
Provinces  (to  which  four  more  were  added  later),  standardised 
calligraphy,  weights  and  measures,  constructed  a  system  of  imperial 
roads  and  burnt  all  books  that  were  not  officially  approved.  The 
Ts'in  Dynasty  was  actually  shortlived  but  its  central  organisation 
was  taken  over  by  Wu  Ti  and  eventually,  after  a  period  of  disorder, 
by  the  T'ang  Dynasty  (a.d.  618-906)  and  the  Ming  Dynasty  (a.d. 
1368-1644).  Despite  internal  troubles  and  the  'Dark  Ages'  of  a.d. 
220-589,  China  has  tended  to  be  a  centralised  empire  under  a  single 
king.  From  the  third  century  B.C.  until  1912  the  sacred  monarch  had 
theoretically  absolute  sovereignty,  unlimited  by  law.  In  practice 
there  were  considerable  changes  but  in  form  the  government  was  very 
stable  and  highly  organised.  Successive  monarchs  had  evolved  a 
personal  absolutism  designed  to  guard  against  usurpation  by  a 
relative,  a  servant  or  eunuch,  a  noble  or  a  provincial  governor. 
Supreme  religious,  executive,  judicial  and  military  powers  were  all 
vested  in  the  emperor  himself.  All  the  influences  of  literature,  educa- 
tion, inspection  and  doctrine  were  organised  in  support  of  the  imperial 
throne.  And  yet  further  stability  was  achieved  by  a  deliberate  absten- 
tion from  foreign  affairs  or  military  conquest.  The  Great  Wall  of 
China  symbolises  a  consistent  policy  of  seeking  unity  and  permanence 
within  a  defined  and  limited  area.  The  price  paid  for  stability  was  in 
terms  of  mental  stagnation —  such  a  stagnation  as  probably  charac- 
terised the  monarchy  of  Egypt. 

It  would  be  wrong,  however,  to  conclude  from  this  that  the 
Chinese  have  made  no  contribution  to  political  thought  or  practice. 
It  is  true  that  their  ministerial  and  provincial  administration  was 
similar  to  that  of  other  empires,  although  more  efficient  than  most,  but 
they  also  invented  selection  of  officials  by  competitive  examination 
together  with  a  system  of  inspection  and  of  ascertaining  the  views  of 
the  public.  Strictly  subordinating  military  to  civilian  officers,  they 
chose  both  on  the  basis  of  written  examinations.  Boys  began  their 
education  at  the  age  of  five  or  six,  spent  four  or  five  years  in  practising 
calligraphy  and  memorising  a  dozen  classic  works.  The  more  apt  for 
study  were  allowed  to  enter  for  a  district  examination.  In  this  the 
candidates  (perhaps  about  2,000  in  each  district)  would  spend  a  night 
and  a  day  in  composing  two  essays  and  a  poem.  Perhaps  about  twenty 
out  of  the  2,000  would  be  awarded  the  first  degree.  These  privileged 
few,  now  exempt  from  taxes  or  corporal  punishment  and  indeed 
from  the  magistrate's  authority,  spent  three  years  in  the  district 
academy  before  attempting  the  provincial  examination,  held  every 

'^  Short  History  of  Chinese  Civilization.  Richard  Wilhelm.  London,  1929.  p.  157. 


56  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

third  year  and  lasting  three  sessions  of  three  days  each.  Theoretically 
the  candidates  might  have  numbered  50,000  but  not  all  stayed  the 
course. 

In  the  first  session  he  was  required  to  produce  three  essays;  one  on  a 
subject  from  the  Analects,  one  from  the  Chang  Yung  (Doctrine  of  the 
Mean),  and  one  from  the  Ming  Tzu  (Works  of  Mencius).  He  must  also 
compose  a  poem  of  eight  couplets.  In  the  second  session  the  candidate 
wrote  five  essays,  one  from  each  of  the  Five  Classics;  and  in  the  third 
session,  five  essays  on  the  art  of  government,  supporting  his  statements 
with  reference  to  great  historic  ideas.  His  originality  was  shown  in  his 
application  of  these  ideas  to  the  problems  given. ^ 

it  was  not  an  examination  in  which  originality,  beyond  a  certain 
point,  was  likely  to  pay.  Of  those  competing  (17,000  to  3,000,  accord- 
ing to  the  population  of  the  province)  from  184  to  52  were  awarded 
the  second  degree.  These  worked  for  one  more  year  and  then  took  the 
third  and  highest  examination  at  the  imperial  capital.  This  was  of  one 
session,  during  which  the  candidate  wrote  an  essay  on  a  current 
political  problem  -  irrigation,  currency,  education  or  the  like.  Some 
300  candidates  were  then  awarded  the  third  and  highest  degree,  the 
top  three  in  merit  having  special  honours  and  the  best  of  all  being 
noted  as  a  likely  future  Minister.  Of  the  300  'chin-shih'  or  achieved 
scholars,  a  third  were  given  academic  posts,  two  thirds  admitted  to  the 
civil  service. 

From  the  Emperor's  point  of  view,  this  system  of  recruitment  had 
great  advantages.  Worked  fairly,  it  excluded  nepotism,  favouritism 
and  influence.  It  allowed  no  unfair  preponderance  to  any  one 
province  nor  even  to  any  one  class  of  society.  It  was  strictly  an  exam- 
ination in  a  literature  which  the  Emperor  approved.  Even,  however, 
on  general  principles,  the  system  had  much  to  commend  it.  It 
excluded  the  mediocre  and  stupid.  It  excluded,  above  all,  those  who 
lacked  the  stamina  to  go  on.  It  has  been  claimed,  and  with  justice, 
that  these  examinations  afforded  a  moral  as  well  as  an  intellectual 
test.-  Their  value  was  recognised  and  the  principle  copied  successively 
by  the  East  India  Company  (in  1832),  the  English- Civil  Service 
(1853)  and  the  Indian  Civil  Service  (1855).=^  One  might  add  that  the 
later  improvements  on  the  competitive  system  have  been  manifestly 
less  efficient. 

At  the  same  time,  the  limitations  of  the  Chinese  system  are  obvious. 
To  arrive  at  an  absolute  order  of  merit,  all  candidates  must  take  the 
same  examination.  This  in  itself  excluded  from  public  life  all  whose 

'  China.  Ed.  by  H.  F.  MacNair.  California,  1946.  See  also  Government  and  Politics  of 
China.  Ch'ien  Tuang  Sheng.  Harvard,  1950.  pp.  22-23. 

■  See  Hs'iintze,  the  Moulder  of  Confucianism.  H.  H.  Dubs.  London,  1927.  p.  II. 
''  China,  op.  cit.  Chap.  XXX  by  Teng  Ssu-Yii.    p.  449. 


MONARCHY     AND     NATIONALISM  57 

abilities  were  other  than  Hterary;  the  lawyer,  the  mathematician,  the 
scientist,  the  merchant,  the  explorer,  the  seaman  and  the  soldier. 
Only  classical  learning  was  considered  and  the  student  was  invited 
to  memorise,  elucidate,  comment  upon  and  versify  round  the 
accepted  ideas  comprised  in  a  fairly  narrow  reading.  He  was  not 
encouraged  to  think  for  himself.  His  final  accomplishment,  moreover 
(for  all  practical  purposes)  was  in  reading  and  writing,  versifying  and 
quoting  from  the  classics.  It  is  the  point  at  which  higher  education 
should  begin  rather  than  finish.  One  might  add,  finally,  that  the 
system  of  taking  the  clever  boy  from  a  poor  family  and  giving  him 
high  office  as  a  result  of  his  examination  marks,  was  not  without  its 
dangers  in  a  society  where  family  loyalties  were  so  deeply-rooted. 
The  official  could  hardly  be  illiterate  but  he  might  easily  prove 
dishonest. 

As  against  corruption,  however,  the  Chinese  had  another  device. 
This  was  the  Board  of  Censors,  established  under  the  T'ang  Dynasty 
and  comprising  two  Censors-General  and  two  Deputies;  with  sub- 
ordinates both  in  the  imperial  capital  and  in  the  Provinces.^  Members 
of  this  Board  served  a  dual  purpose.  They  were  to  act  as  a  check  on 
officialdom.  They  were  also  to  ascertain  the  trend  of  public  opinion 
and  remonstrate  with  the  Emperor  on  the  subject  of  any  act  or 
policy  they  considered  either  unwise  or  unpopular.  They  were  gen- 
erally more  successful  in  exposing  corruption  than  in  remonstrating 
with  an  infallible  Emperor.  They  represent,  nevertheless,  an  important 
Chinese  contribution  to  political  practice.  The  Chinese  monarchy 
owed  much  of  its  stability  to  the  system  of  examinations  and  as  much 
again  perhaps  to  this  official  inspectorate. 

For  much  of  the  history  of  China  the  Emperor  did  in  fact  rule.  But 
examples  are  fairly  common  of  monarchs,  similarly  empowered, 
being  gradually  relegated  to  purely  religious  and  ceremonial  duties. 
Of  these  examples  one  of  the  best  is  afforded  by  Japan.  Here,  in 
Yamato,  as  it  was  then  called,  a  group  of  tribes  came  successively 
under  the  influence  of  China,  circa  a.d.  214,  and  of  Buddhism,  a.d. 
500-600.  There  followed,  in  a.d.  645,  a  revolution  called  'The  Great 
Change'  in  the  course  of  which  two  reformers — Naka,  a  prince  of  the 
Imperial  Clan,  and  Kamatari,  a  noble — reorganised  Japan  on  Chinese 
lines;  weakening  the  nobles,  disarming  the  populace  and  strengthen- 
ing the  central  government.  Tribal  chiefs  were  deprived  of  their  lands 
and  then  reinstated  as  salaried  officials.  Examinations  were  intro- 
duced with  a  new  hierarchy  of  rank,  a  diff'erent  system  of  taxation, 
and  an  improved  system  of  communications.  A  new  capital  was 
founded  at  Nara  and  the  country's  name  changed  to  Nippon. 

'  The  Government  and  Politics  of  China.  Ch'ien  Tuan-Sheng.  Harvard,  1950.  pp.  38, 
39. 


58  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

But  while  the  powers  of  tribal  chieftains  had  been,  in  general, 
curtailed,  one  clan  had  gained  considerably  in  power  and  that  was 
Kamatari's  clan,  the  people  who  had  brought  the  revolution  about. 
Kamatari  was  granted  estates  called  Fujiwara  and  this  name  was  now 
given  to  a  family  destined  to  retain  political  power,  behind  a  nominal 
Emperor,  for  many  generations  to  come.  For  a  moment  it  seemed  that 
the  Emperor  might  lose  even  his  religious  position  under  Buddhist 
domination  but  the  Fujiwara  resisted  this  movement  (in  its  political 
aspect)  and  moved  their  Emperor  to  a  new  capital  at  Kyoto,  away 
from  the  monastic  influences  at  Nara.  Thenceforward,  until  the 
nineteenth  century,  the  functions  of  the  Sacred  Emperor  were  almost 
entirely  ceremonial.  The  Fujiwara  technique  was  to  marry  their 
daughters  to  the  Emperors,  rule  while  the  Emperor  was  young  and 
compel  him  to  abdicate  and  enter  a  monastery  if  he  showed  signs  of 
initiative,  replacing  him  by  another  youngster,  probably  married  to 
another  daughter. 

Perhaps  the  most  interesting  feature  of  this  nominal  Monarchy 
was  the  system  by  which  the  nobles,  dispossessed  of  their  local 
powers,  were  consoled  by  official  sinecures  and  salaries.  In  the  ninth 
century  there  were  eight  Ministries  of  State,  each  with  anything  up  to 
eighteen  departments,  employing  over  6,000  officials  in  the  capital 
alone. ^  The  departments  included  'Bureau  of  Divination',  'Office  of 
Imperial  Mausolea',  'The  Palace  Women's  Office'  and  the  'Utensils 
and  Crockery  OflRce'.  As  these  and  many  others  had  to  be  staff"ed 
by  people  of  good  family,  one  cannot  but  see  in  them  a  Fujiwara 
device  for  keeping  other  people  (the  Emperor  included)  out  of 
mischief.  It  succeeded,  apparently,  for  about  four  hundred  and  fifty 
years. 

As  contrasted  with  monarchies  which  originally  had  (and  in  some 
instances  retained)  all  the  elements  of  both  secular  and  religious 
power,  India  presents  an  example  of  monarchies  in  which  the  ele- 
ments were  never  fully  combined.  For  the  institution  of  Caste  in 
India,  whatever  its  origin,  seems  to  antedate  the  idea  of  monarchy. 
When  the  king  came  to  power,  the  Brahman  was  already  there  and 
able  to  deny  him  religious  supremacy.  More  than  that,  society  had  a 
structure  which  the  king  was  powerless  to  modify,  religions  over 
which  he  had  little  control,  laws  which  he  did  not  originate  and 
customs  by  which  he  might  even  be  bound.  Of  early  Indian  history 
remarkably  little  is  known,  but  it  left  the  kingdoms  of  the  Indus  and 
the  Ganges  with  Caste,  with  the  Vedic  cult,  and  with  a  nobility 
deriving  their  descent  from  previous  invaders.  There  is  evidence  of 
earlier  political  experiments  but,  in  historical  times,  it  was  evidently 
assumed  that  a  society  as  diversified  as  that  of  India  required  mon- 

'  The  Pageant  of  Japanese  History.  M.  M.  Dilts.  New  York,   1938.  New  ed.  1947. 


MONARCHY     AND     NATIONALISM  59 

archical  power  to  give  it  any  coherence  at  all.  Nor  was  a  king  likely  to 
find  the  task  an  easy  one. 

Caste  was  the  division  of  society  into  five  main  hereditary  groups: 
the  Brahman  or  priestly  and  literate  Caste,  the  Warrior  Caste,  the 
Farmer  and  Trader  Caste,  the  Working  Caste  and  the  Slaves  or 
Untouchables. 

The  superiority  of  the  Brahman  caste  is  a  basic  tenet  of  Hindu 
religion. 

Ancient  India,  so  far  as  the  Brahman  caste  presents  it  in  its  own 
literature,  is  a  theocracy,  in  which  no  human  power  can  rightfully 
counterbalance  the  authority  of  those  living  gods,  the  Brahmans. 
Nothing  has  been  left  undone  by  orthodoxy  to  provide  an  immovable 
foundation  for  the  pre-eminence  of  the  priesthood  which  holds  the 
Vedic  cult  in  its  hands  over  the  whole  of  Indian  society. 

This  traditional  point  of  view  expresses  a  theory  rather  than  the 
actual  reality  of  things.  .  .  .^ 

That  Brahmin  pre-eminence  is  more  apparent  in  Brahmin  literature 
than  in  the  history  of  India  as  drawn  from  other  sources  must  be 
strictly  true.  Nevertheless,  the  Brahmins,  if  not  always  as  powerful  as 
they  would  have  liked  to  be,  were  in  a  position  to  deny  the  king  a  part 
of  that  authority  to  which  he  might  otherwise  have  aspired.  The  king 
was  of  the  Warrior  Caste  and,  although  no  doubt  descended  from  the 
gods,  found  his  power  limited  in  more  directions  than  one.  'Who 
will  not  obey  the  command  of  the  person  that  quickly  does,  sees, 
hears,  knows,  causes  to  shine  and  protects  everything,  since  he  is 
born  out  of  the  essence  of  all  deities?'  (Brihatparasara).^  The 
question,  although  rhetorical,  might  nevertheless  be  answered  with 
the  words  'A  Brahman,  who  considers  himself  of  a  higher  caste'.  As 
against  that,  caste  also  made  monarchy  more  secure. 

Based  originally  upon  a  desire  to  avoid  racial  contamination  (a 
prejudice  which  the  British  learnt  in  India  at  a  later  stage)  the  caste 
system  effectively  prevented  the  concentration  of  power  in  any  one 
hand.  But  this  handicap,  limiting  the  king's  authority,  applied  still 
more  to  everyone  else.  As  Beni  Prasad  observes : 

.  .  .  caste  distributed  the  brain  power,  the  fighting  power  and  the 
wealth  of  the  community  among  different  sections,  and  prevented 
that  combination  of  intellectual,  martial  and  economic  strength  which 
led  to  aristocratic  regime  in  ancient  Greece.  Apart  from  the  monarch, 
a  Hindu  ruling  class  could  wield  influence  rather  than  power.^ 

'  Ancient  India  and  Indian  Civilization.  Paul  Masson-Oursel  and  others.  London, 
1934.  p.  85. 

"  A  History  of  Hindu  Political  Theories.  V.  Ghoshal.  Oxford,  1923.  p.  103. 

^  Theory  of  Government  in  Ancient  India.  Beni  Prasad.  Allahabad,  1927.  pp.  66-67. 


60  THE    EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

Still  more  important,  the  Brahman's  ambition  was  limited  by  his 
own  religious  beliefs.  Hindus  have  a  strong  belief  in  an  after-life — 
stronger  than  is  characteristic  of  Europeans  or  Chinese — which  rather 
militates  against  ambition  as  also  against  the  desire  for  reform. 
Writes  V.  R.  Ramachandra  Dikshitar:^ 

'If  the  Brahmans  had  been  really  avaricious  or  ambitious  they  could 
have  easily  aspired  to  the  imperial  and  royal  offices.  If  they  had  only 
wished  they  could  have  easily  adorned  the  thrones  of  many  a  state. 
But  instead  they  sought  voluntarily  a  hard  and  strenuous  life  of  fasting 
and  penance. 

The  Brahman  is  holy  from  birth.  He  is  taught  the  ceremonial  rules, 
hymns  and  legends.  He  alone  can  perform  the  ritual  correctly  and 
effectually.  And  the  ancient  laws,  while  insisting  upon  the  Brahman's 
superiority,  also  provide  him  with  strict  rules  of  life.  According  to 
these,  he  should  spend  a  quarter  of  his  life  in  study  under  a  teacher;  a 
quarter  in  public  and  private  affairs  as  householder  and  husband 
(during  which  phase  he  should  bring  up  a  son  to  succeed  him);  a 
quarter  as  a  recluse,  to  be  spent  in  contemplation;  and  the  last 
quarter  as  an  ascetic,  without  possessions,  without  society  and  even 
without  religious  rites.  During  this  last  phase  the  old  Brahman  lives 
on  charity,  purges  his  heart  of  all  desire  and  seeks  to  merge  himself 
in  Brahma — the  supreme  deity.  Concerning  this  last  phase  the 
injunction  is: 

Let  him  not  desire  to  die;  let  him  not  desire  to  live;  let  him  wait  for 
his  time  as  a  servant  for  the  payment  of  his  wages.  Let  him  patiently 
bear  hard  words.  .  .  .  Against  an  angry  man  let  him  not  in  return  show 
anger;  let  him  bless  when  he  is  cursed. 

He  is  not  to  injure  any  living  creature;  he  is  to  meditate,  give  up  all 
attachments.  The  world  is  all  illusion — a  confused  and  troubled 
dream,  to  be  regarded  without  interest. 

The  wise  man  should  regard  a  world  which  he  knows  to  be  illusion, 
with  indifference;  it  can  do  nothing  for  him,  he  can  do  nothing  for  it; 
it  affects  him  only  with  an  ineradicable  regret  that  it  exists  at  all,  and 
with  a  longing  for  its  disappearance.  .  .  . 

Brahmanism  is  the  religion  of  a  few.  It  is  clearly,  however,  an 
excellent  belief  for  a  Minister  who  may  wish  to  restrain  royal  power 
without  superseding  it.  A  recluse  who  has  come  to  regard  the  business 
of  state  as  something  akin  to  the  pointless  and  slightly  irritating 
buzzing  of  blue-bottles  on  a  window  pane  makes  a  poor  conspirator. 
The  Brahmans  were  men  with  no  reason  to  argue  about  their  pension 

'  Hindu  Administrative  Institutions.  Madras,  1929.  p.  122. 


MONARCHY     AND     NATIONALISM  61 

rights;  and  their  ambitions,  if  they  had  them,  were  not  hmitless.  Nor 
were  they  hopeful  material  for  the  revolutionary  idealist,  for  the 
Brahman  could  view  social  inequalities  without  much  concern.  The 
slave  deserves  his  slavery  because  of  his  misdoings  during  some 
previous  and  sinful  existence.  The  Brahman  has  earned  his  relative 
ease  in  an  earlier  life  and  will  be  punished  in  a  future  life  if  he  misuses 
his  privileges  in  this.  Justice  is  a  long-term  process  and  not  apparent 
during  any  one  phase  of  existence.  It  is  not  the  less  real,  however,  for 
that;  and  there  is  certainly  no  cause  to  interfere  with  its  progress, 
even  were  interference  possible. 

Royal  power  in  India  was  thus  rather  limited  than  threatened  by 
the  power  of  the  Brahmans.  The  king  himself  was  head  of  the  Warrior 
caste  and  might  also  meet  opposition  among  its  members.  But  the 
warriors  lacked  the  wealth  and  education  to  form  a  real  aristocracy, 
while  the  merchants  lacked  both  education  and  prowess.  The  result 
was  that  kingship  was  little  threatened  during  long  periods  of  Indian 
history.  It  was  thought  to  be  essential  (as  it  probably  was)  to  hold  the 
state  together.  And  Indian  political  thought  is  not  directed  towards 
discussing  alternative  forms  of  rule  but  rather  towards  considering 
how  to  make  monarchy  effective.  If  monarchy  is  thus  assumed,  the 
problems  that  remain  are  three;  how  to  choose  the  right  king;  how  to 
educate  the  future  king  in  youth;  and  how  to  ensure  that  the  reigning 
king  has  the  best  possible  advice.  These  themes  underlie  most  of  the 
political  thought  of  ancient  India  and  more  especially  of  the  Maurya 
period,  in  the  early  days  of  Chandragupta  (c.  305  B.C.),  from  which 
much  of  our  information  is  derived. 

As  regards  choice  of  a  future  king,  it  was  strictly  limited,  of  course, 
to  the  royal  family.  The  king  had,  after  all,  to  be  a  descendant  of  the 
gods.  But  it  was  not  essential  for  the  eldest  son  to  succeed.  The 
present  king  and  his  ministers  could  exercise  a  choice.  This  custom 
was  transmitted  to  Malaya,  where  the  setting  aside  of  unacceptable 
princes  has  always  been  known.  But  while  a  choice  might  be  made,  it 
was  obviously  convenient  to  make  the  choice  as  soon  as  possible  so 
that  the  future  ruler  might  be  trained  for  the  work  he  would  have  to 
do.  We  read  that  a  future  king's  education  should  begin  at  the  age  of 
three,  with  the  alphabet  and  mathematics,  and  should  continue  from 
the  age  of  eleven  in  logic,  economics  and  politics.  Passing  on  to 
higher  studies  in  military  science  and  history,  he  was  to  complete 
his  formal  education  at  sixteen.  Then  he  was  to  marry  and  become  a 
subordinate  in  a  department  of  state.  Finally  he  would  be  promoted 
to  a  higher  post  as  General  or  Governor  of  a  Province,  probably 
being  consecrated  as  heir-apparent  at  about  the  same  time.^  The 
Malay  custom  by  which  the  future  ruler  is  supposed  to  pass  through 

'  Tiie  Theory  of  Government  in  Ancient  India.  Beni  Prasad.  Allahabad,  1927.  p.  218. 


62  THE    EVOLUTION    OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

Other  offices  before  reaching  the  highest  is  derived  from  this  Hindu 
system  and  is  open,  incidentally,  to  similar  objections. 

There  are  other  sources  from  which  we  may  gain  a  more  detailed, 
if  less  systematic,  account  of  the  curriculum  of  study  thought 
desirable  for  an  heir-apparent.  In  a  work  called  Siitralankara^  a 
learned  author  lays  down  a  syllabus  on  these  lines: — 

The  Veda,  archery,  medicine,  sacrifices,  astronomy,  grammar,  the 
origin  of  writing,  the  performance  of  sacrifices,  eloquence,  rhetoric, 
the  art  of  love,  interest,  purity  of  families,  the  ten  names,  computa- 
tions, chess,  dice,  the  study  of  origins,  music  and  song,  the  art  of 
playing  on  the  conch,  dancing  and  laughter,  the  art  of  prestidigitation, 
education,  the  making  of  garlands  of  flowers,  massage,  the  science  of 
precious  stones  and  valuable  materials  for  clothing,  silk,  sealing, 
weaving,  wax  work,  strategy,  sewing,  sculpture,  painting,  arrangement 
of  garlands,  interpretation  of  dreams,  interpretation  of  the  flight  of 
birds,  horoscopes  of  boys  and  girls,  the  training  of  elephants,  the  art 
of  playing  on  the  tambourine,  the  rules  of  battle  array,  the  domesti- 
cating of  horses,  the  carrying  of  the  lance,  jumping,  running  and 
fording  a  river. 

To  the  modern  educationalist,  interested  in  'comprehensive' 
schools  and  eager  to  discourage  premature  specialisation,  there  is 
much  in  this  syllabus  worthy  of  careful  study.  To  the  student  of 
political  thought  it  suggests  that  the  prince  was  at  least  kept  out  of 
mischief,  with  'free  activity'  reduced  to  a  minimum. 

Once  the  chosen  prince  succeeded  to  the  throne,  following  his  years 
of  education  and  administrative  experience,  the  Indian  thinkers  were 
intent  on  seeing  that  he  worked  methodically,  perhaps  mainly  so  that 
his  official  advisers  could  have  regular  access  to  the  presence.  Two 
suggested  time-tables  for  the  day  seem  worth  quoting  in  full.  Neither 
is  an  account,  one  may  assume,  of  what  an  actual  king  did.  Each  is 
rather  a  philosopher's  idea  of  what  the  ideal  king  ought  to  do. 

6.00  to    7.30  a.m.  Supervising  receipts  and  expenditure. 

7.30  to    9.00  a.m.  Affairs  of  citizens  and  people. 

9.00  to  10.30  a.m.  Bathing,  Vedic  chanting  and  eating. 

10.30  to  noon  a.m.  Affairs  of  the  officers  of  state. 

12.00  to    1.30  p.m.  Council  with  ministers. 

1.30  to    3.00  p.m.  Rest  and  amusement. 

3.00  to    4.30  p.m.  Supervising  the  army. 

4.30  to    6.00  p.m.  Regarding  enemies  and  military  operations. 

6.00  to    7.30  p.m.  Receiving  intelligence  officers  and  others. 

7.30  to    9.00  p.m.  Bathing,  eating  and  prayers. 

9.00  to    1.30  a.m.  Music  and  sleep. 

'  Ihicl. 


3.00  to 

4.00  a.m. 

4.30  to 

7.30  a.m. 

7.30  to 

11.15  a.m. 

11.15  to  12.45  p.m. 

12.45  to 

2.15  p.m. 

2.15  to 

3.45  p.m. 

3.45  to 

4.30  p.m. 

4.30  to 

6.00  p.m. 

6.00  to 

7.30  p.m. 

7.30  to 

3.00  a.m. 

MONARCHY     AND     NATIONALISM  63 

1.30  to    3.00  a.m.     Again  music  and  thoughts  of  the  morrow. 
3.00  to    4.30  a.m.     Other  state  business  pondered  over. 
4.30  to    6.00  a.m.     Morning  greetings  by  Ministers.^ 

A  relatively  undisciplined  European  ruler,  after  only  four  and  a 
half  hours  sleep,  might  have  been  tempted,  in  these  circumstances  to 
return  the  ministers'  greetings  with  derision.  For  him  the  alternative 
programme  might  have  seemed  slightly  preferable: — - 

Supervising  accounts. 

Bath  and  prayers,  physical  exercises. 

Official  business. 

Dinner,  rest  and  reading. 

Justice  and  Council. 

Hunting. 

Parade  and  army  muster. 

Evening  prayer  and  meal. 

Report  of  Spies. 

Rest  and  sleep. 

The  picture  of  kingship  thus  presented  in  Indian  literature  differs 
sharply  from  other  conceptions  of  that  office.  The  king  is  not  to  be 
the  hieratic  figure  upon  which  religious  ritual  centred  in  Egypt  or 
Japan.  He  was  not  to  be  an  active  soldier,  normally  absent  on  the 
frontiers  or  in  the  field.  He  was  not  to  be  a  tyrant,  doing  what  he 
chose.  He  was  expected  to  be  a  patient  administrator,  dealing  with 
routine  business  at  the  proper  time,  auditing  accounts,  conferring 
with  departmental  chiefs,  inspecting  troops  and  reading  reports. 
No  doubt  kings  would  often  fall  short  of  this  ideal  pattern  (and  as 
often  perhaps  go  beyond  it)  but  there  is  reason  at  least  to  suppose 
that  the  Indians,  or  at  any  rate  the  Brahmans,  pictured  their  king  as 
an  actual  ruler  with  real  powers  and  definite  duties.  They  never, 
however,  thought  of  him  as  ruling  without  advice. 

The  guidance  of  ministers  was  essential  to  the  Indian  theory  of 
kingship  and  much  thought  was  given  to  the  problems  involved;  the 
choice  of  ministers,  their  number,  their  duties  and  their  procedure  in 
council.  First  of  the  ministers  was  the  Purohita,  the  chief  Brahman, 
a  man  distinguished,  it  was  supposed,  by  learning  and  character. 
Kautalya  advises: 

.  .  .  that  he  may  be  appointed  or  selected  as  the  purohita  who  belongs 
to  a  distinguished  and  good  family,  highly  learned,  versed  in  all  the 

^   Hindu  Administrative  Institutions.  V.  R.  Ramachandra  Dikshitar.  Madras,  1929. 
-  Even  though  the  time  allocated  to  hunting  would  seem  to  offer  a  rather  restricted 
scope. 


64  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

sacred  lore,  as  well  as  the  science  of  astronomy,  and  the  theory  of 
polity,  skilled  in  propitiating  gods  by  the  various  rites  prescribed  in 
the  Athava  Veda,  to  ward  off  calamities  providential  or  otherwise 
occurring  in  the  kingdom.  Him  the  king  should  follow  as  a  student  his 
teacher,  a  son  his  father,  and  a  servant  his  master.  .  .  .^ 

The  Purohita's  duties  were  basically  religious  and  ceremonial  but 
it  was  also  generally  agreed  that  the  king  could  do  nothing  without 
him.  Tt  is  only  a  kingdom  under  the  guiding  hand  of  a  Brahman  that 
will  last  long'.  According  to  another  (and  Brahman)  source,  '  A  king 
without  a  purohita  is  like  an  elephant  without  the  mahout'.  Whereas 
elsewhere  the  king  might  be  the  chief  priest  himself,  in  India  he  was 
an  administrator  but  with  a  priest  at  his  elbow  of  almost  equal  (and 
sometimes  perhaps  superior)  power.  The  Purohita,  whose  salary  was 
enormous,  accompanied  the  king  in  battle,  uttering  prayers,  en- 
couraging the  troops,  threatening  the  cowardly  and  seeing  to  it  that 
the  army  was  drawn  up  'in  the  formation  invented  by  Aditya  or  by 
Usanas' — which  would  seem  to  show  that  religious  influence  went 
quite  far  enough. 

The  purohita  usually  formed  one  of  an  Inner  Cabinet  of  four;  the 
other  three  being  the  Mantrin  or  Chief  Adviser,  the  Commander-in- 
Chief  and  the  Heir  apparent.  These  dealt  with  matters  of  the  greatest 
secrecy.  But  they  were  also  members  of  the  full  Mantra  or  Council, 
which  numbered  eight,  ten  or  possibly  twelve,  with  probably  a 
majority  of  the  Warrior  Caste.  Some  arguments  were  put  forward  by 
a  tenth  century  thinker'^  for  limiting  the  council  to  three,  five  or 
seven.  The  numbers  in  fact  varied,  those  included  being  normally 
perhaps  the  Treasurer,  Foreign  Minister,  Chief  Justice,  Minister  of 
the  Interior,  Minister  of  Works,  Minister  of  Revenue  and  Agri- 
culture; with  sometimes,  in  addition,  the  Chamberlain  and  the 
Commander  of  the  Household  Troops.  There  was  also  a  larger 
Council  of  thirty-seven  representative  members,  including  four 
Brahmans,  eight  of  the  Warrior  Caste,  twenty-one  of  the  wealthier 
Farmers  and  Merchants,  three  picked  Sudras  and  one  very  carefully 
chosen  Suta.  We  read  of  other  ministers  in  charge  of  prisons,  forests, 
frontiers  and  forts.  When  council  meetings  were  held,  considerable 
care  was  taken  to  ensure  secrecy.  A  special  detached  building  was  used 
for  the  purpose,  to  prevent  eavesdropping,  and  no  living  creature 
allowed  within  earshot;  a  rule  which  applied  not  only  to  human 
beings  but  to  dogs,  deer  and  (more  reasonably)  to  parrots. 

Procedure  was  carefully  laid  down.  It  seems  to  have  been  under- 
stood, in  the  first  place,  that  the  king  could  make  no  major  decision 
without  consulting  his  ministers.  On  the  other  hand,  the  decision, 

■  See  The  Veciic  Age.  Ed.  by  R.  C.  Majumdar.  London,  1951.  p.  484. 
-  Theorv  of  Government  in  Ancient  India.   Beni   Prasad.   Allahabad,    1927.   See  pp. 
235-236,  etc. 


MONARCHY     AND     NATIONALISM  65 

when  made,  was  his.  He  was  not  bound  by  a  majority  vote  and  might 
obviously  pay  more  attention  to  some  advisers  than  to  others.  Soma- 
deva  Suri,  a  tenth  century  thinker,  thus  urges  the  king  to  ignore  the 
advice  of  soldiers  when  deciding  between  war  and  peace. 

There  is  another  precaution  necessary  in  deliberation  of  state. 
Military  officers  are  not  to  be  consulted  in  the  determination  of  policy. 
They  are  only  too  ready  to  clutch  at  war.  Strife  is  the  law  of  their 
being.  They  are  not  to  have  a  hand  in  the  formation  of  policy  lest  they 
involve  the  state  in  needless  wars.  Besides,  if  they  are  placed  in  control 
of  civil  policy,  they  may  grow  dangerously  proud  and  powerful.  So, 
according  to  Somadeva,  the  policy  of  the  state  is  never  to  be  governed 
by  the  army. 

In  conducting  negotiations,  the  king  and  councillors  alike  should 
observe  gravity  and  courtesy.  Politeness  enables  one  to  achieve  the 
deadliest  objects.  The  peacock,  endowed  with  a  sweet  voice,  makes 
short  work  of  snakes.  It  is,  again,  mere  folly  to  speak  too  much,  or 
disclose  too  much.  Above  all,  one  should  not  lose  one's  temper  or 
presence  of  mind.  Fortitude  in  adversity  constitutes  real  greatness. 
A  yet  greater  danger  to  the  state  is  popular  indignation  which  should 
never  be  roused.^ 

There  is  sound  advice  here.  The  theme  of  deadly  politeness  is 
touched  upon,  incidentally,  by  other  authors. 

'The  king,  we  are  told,  should  be  humble  in  speech  alone,  but  sharp 
at  heart  like  a  razor.  He  should  carry  his  foe  on  his  shoulders  as  long 
as  the  time  is  unfavourable,  and  when  the  opportunity  arrives  he  should 
dash  his  enemy  to  pieces  like  an  earthen  pot  on  a  piece  of  rock'.  The 
king  who  desires  prosperity  should  slay  the  individual  who  thwarts  his 
purposes,  be  this  person  even  his  son,  brother,  father  or  friend.  .  .  . 
When  wishing  to  smite,  he  should  speak  gently.  After  smiting,  he 
should  speak  gentlier  still;  after  striking  off  the  head  with  the  sword, 
he  should  grieve  and  shed  tears.  .  .  .^ 

To  propose  too  many  amendments  to  resolutions  moved  from  the 
chair  might  possibly  prove  unwise.  And  yet  it  was  evidently  the  aim 
to  reach  an  agreed  solution  to  the  problems  debated.  A  unanimous 
decision  was  the  ideal.  Once  it  was  reached  or  the  matter  at  least 
decided,  the  verdict  was  placed  on  record,  the  minute  being  signed 
not  merely  by  the  king  but  by  all  the  ministers  present. 

The  procedure  is  described  as  follows : — - 

Without  a  written  document  no  business  of  state  was  done.  A 
matter  was  endorsed  first  by  the  home  minister,  the  lord  chief  justice, 
the  minister  of  law,  the  minister  of  diplomacy,  with  the  fixed  style 
'This  is  not  opposed  by  us',  i.e.  their  departments  had  no  objection. 
The  Minister  of  Revenue  and  Agriculture  endorsed  with  the  remark 

•  Theory  of  Government  in  Ancient  India.  Beni  Prasad.  Allahabad,  1927.  pp.  235-6. 

*  A  History  of  Hindu  Political  Theories.  V.  Ghoshal.  Oxford,  1923.  p.  103. 


66  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

'The  note  is  all  right'.  The  minister  of  finance:  'Well  considered'; 
then  the  president  of  the  Council  inscribed  in  his  own  hand  'Really 
proper'.  Next  the  prathiidhi  wrote:  'Fit  to  be  accepted':  the  yuvaraja 
following  with  'Should  be  accepted',  in  his  own  hand.  The  ecclesias- 
tical minister  endorsed  'This  is  agreeable  to  me'.  Every  minister  affixed 
his  seal  at  the  end  of  his  note.  Finally  the  king  wrote  'Accepted',  and 
set  his  seal.  He  was  supposed  to  be  unable  to  go  through  the  document 
carefully  and  the  Yuvaraja  or  someone  else  was  to  make  this  endorse- 
ment for  him,  which  was  shown  him.  After  this  first  stage  was  over 
the  minute  was  signed  by  all  the  ministers  as  the  Council.  Finally  it 
was  once  more  presented  to  the  king  who  'without  delay'  wrote  'Seen' 
as  he  had  not  the  'capacity'  to  criticize  it.^ 

Some  of  this  reads  as  if  the  earlier  kings,  (Chandragupta,  perhaps) 
had  been  unable  to  read,  or  unable  perhaps  to  read  Sanskrit. 

It  would  of  course  be  wrong  to  base  a  general  conception  of  Hindu 
government  upon  isolated  texts  spread  over  hundreds  of  years.  It 
would  be  at  least  equally  wrong  to  conclude  that  the  principles  of 
cabinet  government  were  discovered  in  India  and  spread  thence  to 
other  lands.  We  should  probably  be  justified,  however,  in  concluding 
that  councils  and  cabinets  are  influenced  everywhere  by  similar 
conditions.  The  ideal  committee  for  secrecy  is  three  (as  one  Indian 
pointed  out).  The  ideal  committee  for  reaching  a  sensible  decision 
fairly  quickly  is  five  or  seven.  As  numbers  increase  beyond  that  point, 
discussion  becomes  diflficult  and  people  begin  making  speeches.  This 
is  sufficiently  known.  Other  members  are  added,  nevertheless,  and  for 
two  good  reasons.  In  the  first  place,  expert  knowledge  is  needed  on 
more  than  six  topics.  In  the  second  place,  the  persons  included  cannot 
oppose  while  those  left  out  can  and  probably  will.  Expanding  on 
these  principles,  the  numbers  in  council  rise  inexorably  to  ten,  twelve 
or  fifteen.  By  the  time  the  number  twenty  is  reached,  the  five  most 
important  members  will  be  meeting  beforehand  to  make  previous 
decisions  in  secret  conclave.  Thenceforward  the  business  of  the  larger 
council  becomes  increasingly  formal  and  some  of  its  members  are 
demanding  admission  to  the  Inner  Cabinet.  As  it  proves  impossible 
to  exclude  them,  the  business  of  the  Inner  Cabinet  itself  becomes  more 
formal  .  .  .  and  so  the  process  continues.  It  is  evident  that  the  Indians 
knew  all  about  it  in  the  Maurya  period  and  are  rediscovering  now 
anything  they  had  forgotten  since. 

Theoretically,  the  system  of  a  chosen  king,  educated  for  his  ofllice 
and  advised  by  ministers  of  experience  and  probity  is  a  good  one.  In 
practice  it  falls  short  of  the  theoretical  ideal.  The  fashion  is  to  point 
out  that  the  king  may  be  weak,  wicked  or  even  insane.  But  there 
would  still  be  difficulties  even  if  all  the  kings  were  strong,  virtuous  and 

'  Hiiulii  Adiiiinisiralive  Institutions.  V.  R.  Ramachandra  Dikshitar.  Madras,  1929. 
p.  141.  The  'yuvaraja'  was  the  heir  apparent,  the  ecclesiastical  minister,  the  Purohita. 


MONARCHY     AND     NATIONALISM  67 

sensible.  For  they  would  still  be  human  beings  and  liable  to  the 
accident  of  birth  and  death,  disease  and  mishap.  The  theory  of  how 
the  heir  apparent  should  be  trained  breaks  down  if  the  king  outlives 
his  son,  and  perhaps  his  grandson  as  well.  The  system  is  weakened  if 
a  king  succeeds  prematurely,  at  the  age  of  three  or  five,  with  all  the 
problems  of  regency.  Apart  from  that,  a  king  can  be  ill  for  long 
periods,  crippled  by  an  accident  or  left  childless  as  the  result  of  an 
epidemic.  A  theoretically  stately  procession  of  monarchs  is  interrup- 
ted, in  practice,  by  periods  during  which  the  ruler  is  too  young,  too 
old,  too  sick  or  too  deaf.  Worse  still  are  the  periods  of  doubt  during 
which  uncertainty  prevails  as  to  who  the  next  king  is  to  be.  So  far  as 
India  was  concerned,  what  would  in  any  case  have  been  a  defect  in 
monarchy  was  made  far  worse  by  the  institution  of  polygamy.  In  a 
regime  lacking  any  precise  rule  governing  the  succession  the  Harem 
was  perhaps  the  chief  menace.  It  produced  a  horde  of  rival  princes, 
each  backed  by  a  jealous  mother.  For  the  king  the  problem  was  ever 
present.  Should  he  send  his  younger  brothers  to  govern  remote 
provinces?  That  would  make  it  easy  for  them  to  rebel.  Should  he  then 
keep  them  at  court,  under  his  own  eye?  Why,  then  they  would 
poison  him. 

There  was  no  real  answer  to  the  problem.  Kautalya  suggests  that 
the  Harem  should  be  isolated,  walled,  moated  and  approached  by  a 
single  well-guarded  door.  The  guards  should  be  females,  eunuchs  or 
old  men.^  In  fact,  a  Hindu  palace  seems  to  have  been  organised  as 
much  to  ensure  safety  as  comfort. 

Everything  bespeaks  precaution.  The  structure  of  the  palace  itself 
includes  mazes,  secret  and  underground  passages,  hollow  pillars, 
hidden  staircases,  collapsible  floors.  Against  fire,  poisonous  animals, 
and  other  poisons  there  is  diverse  provision,  includmg  trees  which 
snakes  avoid,  parrots  and  carika  birds  which  cry  out  on  seeingaserpent, 
other  birds  which  are  variously  aff"ected  by  the  sight  of  poison.  Every- 
one has  his  own  apartment,  and  none  of  the  interior  officials  are 
allowed  to  communicate  with  the  outside.  .  .  .  Material  objects,  as  they 
pass  in  and  out,  are  placed  on  record  and  under  seal.  According  to 
Megasthenes  (XXVI I,  15)  the  king  changes  his  apartment  every  night. 
The  kitchen  is  a  secret  place  and  there  is  a  multitude  of  tasters.  . .  ." 

As  this  passage  suggests,  the  Civil  Service  was  large.  Nor  was  it 
confined  to  the  royal  residence.  We  learn  of  a  revenue  system  drawing 
its  funds  from  an  excise  on  liquor,  gambling,  salt  and  prostitution. 
We  have  salary  lists  showing  that  the  Purohita  and  Crown  Prince 
were  paid  on  the  same  scale  and  twice  as  highly  as  anyone  else.  We 
find  the  physician  placed  on  a  salary  scale  level  with  the  chariot- 

'  The  Theory  of  Government  in  Ancient  India.  Beni  Prasad.  Allahabad,  1927.  p.  122 
^  Cambridge  Modern  History-  Vol.  \.  p.  493.  By  F.  W.  Thomas. 


68  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

driver,  horsetrainer  and  carpenter,  receiving  half  the  income  paid  to 
a  captain  of  infantry.  We  find  much  of  the  apparatus  of  modern 
government,  with  procedures  similar  to  those  of  governments  which 
still  exist.  What  we  do  not  find  is  any  suggested  alternative  to  mon- 
archy. For  the  result  of  any  palace  plot  or  assassination  could  only 
be  to  replace  one  king  by  another.  It  involved  no  threat  to  monarchy 
itself. 

To  find  an  example  of  a  king  who  managed  to  retain  all  the 
combined  authority  of  patriarch,  priest,  ruler  and  war-leader,  we 
must  turn  to  Europe  and  to  that  period  in  history  when  monarchy 
was  at  its  height.  For  it  was  in  Europe  that  the  idea  of  nationalism 
gave  to  kingship  that  additional  splendour  which  only  a  united  people 
could  give.  The  king  with  merely  paternal  power  could  be  no  more 
than  the  senior  among  others  of  almost  equal  authority.  The  king  too 
closely  identified  with  God  might  tend  (as  in  Egypt  or  Japan)  to  become 
the  stuffed  dummy  of  religious  veneration  and  practical  impotence. 
The  king  entirely  occupied  in  the  business  of  government  may  be 
caught  in  the  wheels  of  his  own  routine  (as  happened,  no  doubt,  to 
many  Indian  kings).  The  king,  finally,  who  is  primarily  a  leader  in 
war  (like  a  seventeenth  century  Prince  of  Orange)  will  be  unpopular  if 
the  war  goes  badly  and  redundant  when  it  is  over.  Greatest  in  power 
was  the  king  who  avoided  each  of  these  pitfalls.  Greatest,  in  fact,  was 
Louis  XIV.  He  lacked  the  absolute  power  of  a  modern  dictator;  to 
which  no  king  could  possibly  have  aspired.  But  within  the  religious 
and  traditional  framework  of  monarchy  he  had  perhaps  as  great  an 
authority  as  one  man  has  ever  borne;  not  so  much  from  any  unique 
quality  in  him  as  from  the  wave  of  nationalist  feeling  upon  which 
he  rode. 

Nationalism  was  the  sentiment  which  grew  up  in  the  later  Middle 
Ages  in  such  kingdoms  as  were  then  unified  (or  in  process  of  unifi- 
cation) within  strategic  and  defined  frontiers  which  enclosed  people 
who  were  coming  to  speak  a  single  language.  Medieval  kingdoms  had 
often  been  scattered  territories — part  in  France,  for  example,  and 
part  in  England  or  Spain — comprising  peoples  differing  from  each 
other  in  customs  and  speech.  Formidable  were  the  first  consolidated 
states,  of  which  England  was  among  the  earliest.  Rival  kings  en- 
deavoured to  follow  suit,  creating  national  realms,  each  from  fear  of 
the  other.  France  arose  from  fear  of  England,  Great  Britain  was 
formed  from  fear  of  Spain,  Germany  from  fear  of  France,  Austria- 
Hungary  from  fear  of  Germany  and  Italy  from  fear  of  Austria. 
Nationalism  was  the  unifying  force  and  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  and 
Italy  were  for  long  weakened  by  the  lack  of  it.  Nationalism  was 
expressed  in  monarchy  and  sad  was  the  fate  of  Poland  which  had 
only  an  elective  crown.  The  two  biggest  exceptions  to  the  rule  of 


MONARCHY     AND     NATIONALISM  69 

kingship  in  seventeenth  century  Europe  were  the  Netherlands  and 
England,  and  these  reverted  to  monarchy  under  the  pressure  of  war, 
and  indeed  under  the  pressure  of  war  with  each  other.  They  ended 
their  conflict  not  only  both  monarchies  but  both,  momentarily, 
under  the  same  monarch.  By  the  last  half  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
nationalist  monarchy  had  become  the  fashion  and  Louis  XIV  of 
France  was  the  model  of  what  a  national  monarch  should  be. 

Louis  had  and  retained  all  the  basic  elements  of  power  but 
heightened  by  the  love  of  his  subjects  for  the  France  they  saw 
embodied  in  him,  a  France  to  be  defined  by  the  Alps,  the  Pyrenees 
and  the  Rhine.  'The  King's  authority  was  very  nearly  the  same  as 
that  exercised  by  the  head  of  a  family',  writes  Paul  VioUet,^  and 
Louis  himself  told  his  expected  successor  to  'Think  of  them  as  your 
children'  and  'Set  your  subjects  an  example  that  a  Christian  father 
sets  his  family'.  This  tradition  of  royal  fatherhood  was  strong  and  had 
been  especially  maintained  by  Henri  IV  who  once  told  his  Parlement 
'You  see  me  in  my  private  room  .  .  .  like  the  head  of  a  family  [come] 
to  speak  frankly  to  my  children'.  With  it  went  the  king's  special 
responsibilities  in  receiving  petitions  and  settling  disputes.  But  the 
King  also  had  his  share  of  divinity.  Louis  was  convinced,  for  one, 
that  his  authority  was  delegated  to  him  by  God,  and  indeed  conferred 
at  his  coronation.  It  was,  he  admitted,  a  secular  authority,  for  he 
conceded  the  Pope  a  measure  of  control  in  his  own  proper  sphere. 
Suger  had  described  Louis  VI  as  'the  Vicar  of  God  Whose  living 
image  he  bears  in  himself-  and  the  idea  had  lost  nothing  of  its  force 
when  Louis  XIV  ruled  in  his  turn.  In  his  Memoirs  (assuming  them  to 
be  genuine)  he  clearly  explains  the  view  he  took  of  his  own  sacred 
office: 

.  .  .  occupying,  so  to  speak,  the  place  of  God,  we  seem  to  be  sharers  of 
His  knowledge,  as  well  as  of  His  authority. 

Exercising  as  we  do  the  Divine  function  here  below.  .  .  . 

Kings,  whom  God  appoints  the  sole  guardians  of  the  public 
weal.  .  .  .^ 

Pictures  of  his  coronation  show  that  even  Catholic  ritual  could 
afford  him  a  position  as  God's  representative  on  earth.  But  that  was 
not  all,  for  there  was  an  added  pagan  feeling  about  Versailles,  where 
the  motif  of  the  Sun  or  of  Apollo  pervaded  the  architecture,  the 
sculpture  and  the  painting.  In  the  background,  behind  the  Christian 
theology,  the  King's  magical  and  life-giving  powers  remained;  a 
legacy  from  Rome  and  Egypt.  But  his  belief  in  his  divine  mission 

'  The  Old  Regime  in  France.  Frantz  Funck-Brentano.  1926.  Trans,  by  H.  Wilson. 
London,  1929.  p.  145. 

-  Funck-Brentano,  op.  cit.  p.  149. 

'  Quoted  in  The  Splendid  Century.  W.  H.  Lewis,  p.  41. 


70  THE     INVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

Stopped  short  of  the  absurd.  If  he  was  something  of  a  pubhc  idol  at 
Versailles,  he  could  relax  at  Marly  and  be  a  man  again. 

He  ran  less  risk  of  becoming  an  idol  than  he  did  of  being  caught  in 
the  wheels  of  administration.  As  St.  Simon  remarked,  'Give  me  an 
almanac  and  a  watch  and  ...  I  will  tell  you  what  the  King  is  doing'. 
His  daily  routine  was  not  invariable  but  it  is  reminiscent,  at  least,  of 
the  time-table  prepared  for  Indian  kings  by  Indian  philosophers  (see 
pp.  62-63).  It  seems  to  have  followed  some  such  plan  as  this: — ^ 


8.00  a.m. 

The  King  is  called 

8.15  a.m. 

Greetings  by  Ministers  and  Court 

9.00  a.m. 

Prayers 

10.00  a.m. 

Council 

12.30  p.m. 

Chapel  Royal  for  Mass 

1.00  p.m. 

Visits  the  Ladies 

2.00  p.m. 

Dinner 

3.30  p.m. 

Exercise 

5.00  p.m. 

Council 

7.00  p.m. 

Reception,  with  music 

10.00  p.m. 

Supper 

11.00  p.m. 

Visits  the  Ladies 

11.30  p.m. 

Receives  Ministers  and  Court 

12.00  p.m. 

Sleep 

Louis  considered  it  his  duty  to  know  everything  (especially  his  own 
country),  to  work  eight  or  nine  hours  a  day,  to  do  justice  and  show 
mercy  and  to  put  the  good  of  the  State  before  every  other  con- 
sideration. He  considered  himself  responsible  for  his  work  to  God, 
and  to  God  alone.  He  had  given  serious  thought  to  the  nature  of 
monarchy  and  pointed  out  that,  in  lands  where  there  was  no  king 
'Instead  of  having  one  sovereign  power  as  they  should,  nations  are 
subject  to  the  whims  of  a  thousand  tyrants'."^  That  he  assumed  the 
entire  responsibility  for  day-to-day  administration  is  shown  from 
his  own  Memoirs  in  which  he  writes: — 

It  is  always  worse  for  the  public  to  control  the  government  than  to 
support  even  a  bad  government  which  is  directed  by  Kings  whom  God 
alone  can  judge.  .  .  .  Those  acts  of  Kings  that  are  in  seeming  violation 
of  the  rights  of  their  subjects  are  based  upon  reasons  of  State — the 
most  fundamental  of  all  motives,  as  everyone  will  admit,  but  one  often 
misunderstood  by  those  who  do  not  rule.^ 

'  Based  on  Funck-Brentano  and  W.  H.  Lewis,  op.  cit.  Some  of  the  hours  given  are 
only  approximate  and  some,  in  fact,  varied.  Supper,  e.g.  might  be  as  late  as  11.30. 
-Louis  XIV.  Louis  Bcrtrand.  Trans.  C.  B.  Chase.  New  York,  1928.  p.  312 
^  Ibid.  See  p.  313.  See  also  A  King's  lessons  in  statecraft.  Ed.  by  J.  Longnon.  London, 
1924. 


MONARCHY     AND     NATIONALISM  71 

Reasons  of  State  are  thus  comprehended  only  by  the  King  and 
those  who  assist  him.  Nor,  it  is  obvious  from  Louis  XIV's  practice, 
was  his  power — derived  both  from  God  and  from  Reasons  of  State — 
to  be  shared  with  others.  He  did  not  rule  through  his  nobles  but 
through  middle-class  officials  like  Colbert  and  Louvois.  There  were 
Councils  of  State,  of  Despatches,  of  Finance,  of  Commerce  and  of 
Conscience,  together  with  a  Privy  Council.  The  Secretaries  of  State 
held  key  positions  but  with  authority  directly  derived  from  the  King. 
They  merely  gave  advice  when  it  was  required  and  then  carried  out 
decisions  which  the  king  had  made. 

The  nobles,  whose  birth,  property  and  privilege  might  have  given 
them  a  measure  of  independent  authority,  more  especially  in  the 
provinces,  were  rendered  impotent,  partly  by  their  own  Caste  system 
and  partly  by  deliberate  royal  policy.  Caste  in  France  had  the  same 
political  result  as  in  India.  It  prevented  any  other  man  combining  (as 
the  king  did)  the  powers  of  the  divine,  the  intellectual,  the  financier 
and  the  soldier.  The  Nobility  of  the  Sword,  itself  split  into  jealous 
categories,  was  forbidden  to  engage  in  trade — forbidden  by  a 
sixteenth  century  decree  enacted  at  the  instance  of  the  merchants 
themselves.^  The  Nobility  of  the  Robe  had  a  monopoly  of  official  and 
legal  offices  but  were  practically  excluded  from  high  rank  in  the  army, 
v/hich  was  reserved  for  Nobles  of  Ancestry  or  anyway  of  Birth.  The 
Financier  or  Banker  might  purchase  a  title  of  nobility  but  would 
remain,  socially,  non-existent.  Bishops  and  Abbots,  of  noble  birth, 
had  something  like  a  monopoly  of  education  but  were  kept  from 
political  power  and  vowed  to  celibacy. - 

What  caste  had  begun  the  king  took  care  to  finish.  The  experiences 
of  his  youth  had  taught  him  to  deprive  the  nobles  of  political  office 
and  experience  (save  in  diplomacy).  This  left  them  idle  and  poten- 
tially mischievous.  Louis  wanted  to  have  them,  therefore,  under  his 
own  eye,  and  adopted,  therefore,  a  policy  such  as  had  long  been 
familiar  at  the  Imperial  Court  of  Japan.  He  gave  many  of  the  highest 
nobles  a  sinecure  position  in  his  own  household,  one  involving 
ceremonial  duties  and  a  constant  attendance  at  court.  Others  attended 
to  angle  for  such  sinecures,  others  to  avoid  the  royal  displeasure 
which  their  absence  would  attract,  and  others  again  (the  lesser  fry) 
attached  themselves  to  the  greater.  By  the  end  of  Louis  XIV's  long 
reign,  the  nobles'  lives  had  come  to  centre  on  the  king,  on  the  routine 
and  ceremonial  of  monarchy.  Their  lives  had  come  to  centre,  in  fact, 
on  Versailles. 

Versailles  was  built,  largely,  between  1669  and  1710,  although  much 

'  This  law  was  not  repealed  until  1756. 

^  See  The  European  Nobility  in  the  Eighteenth  Centurv.  Ed.  by  A.  Goodwin.  London, 
1953.  See  pp.  22-42. 


72  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

of  what  now  exists  is  of  later  date.  The  lesser  palaces  of  Trianon 
and  Marly  were  built  after  1688.  They  do  not  represent  a  personal 
extravagance. 

The  cost  of  Versailles  was  not  undertaken  for  a  man,  it  was  under- 
taken for  a  nation;  the  man  and  the  nation  were  indistinguishable.  Its 
gigantic  size  is  the  crowd  surrounding  monarchy,  its  continual  level 
lines  are  the  timelessness  of  monarchy:  the  claim  to  be  enduring.^ 

Versailles  was  certainly  a  shrine  of  nationalism  as  symbolised  by 
kingship.  But  it  was  also  the  place  where  an  entire  upper  nobility 
was  absorbed  in  entertainment,  clothes,  retinue,  building,  ritual  and 
gambling.  Life  at  court  was  exhausting,  splendid,  tedious,  dazzling, 
comfortless  and  costly.  Before  utterly  condemning  all  this  frivolity, 
however,  let  us  remember  that  Louis  was  actually  governing  the 
country  from  Versailles. 

The  king,  we  have  seen,  combined  powers  which  were  paternal, 
divine  and  administrative.  He  was  also  the  leader  in  war.  Kingship 
represented  nationalism  and  the  first  thing  to  be  nationalised  was 
war.  It  was  the  seventeenth  century  which  saw  the  organization  of 
national  armies  on  lines  we  still  follow,  invented  by  Maurice  of 
Nassau  and  Gustavus  Adolphus.  It  is  from  the  seventeenth  century 
that  we  derive  the  Regiment,  Battalion,  Squadron,  Company  and 
Troop;  the  Colonel,  Lieutenant-Colonel,  Major,  Captain,  Lieut- 
enant, Sergeant  and  Corporal.  And  the  holders  of  these  ranks  drew 
no  authority  from  their  own  titles  of  nobility  but  solely  from  the 
king's  commission  or  appointment.  War  was  thus  nationalised  and 
only  battles  'royal'  would  henceforth  be  allowed.  Nor  would  the  king 
himself  be  absent.  He  was  present  at  battles — or,  to  be  more  precise, 
at  sieges — and  shared  a  life  under  canvas  with  his  generals.  He  could 
be  quite  accurately  depicted  in  contemporary  art  as  astride  his 
charger.  Between  the  legs  of  his  horse  could  be  seen  the  smoke 
drifting  lazily  over  the  threatened  bastion,  while  (nearer  the  eye)  the 
pioneers  might  be  glimpsed  pressing  forward  from  the  second  parallel 
to  the  third.  And  while  his  generals  may  sometimes  have  prayed  for 
his  departure,  his  presence  may  well  at  times  have  been  eflTective,  more 
especially  in  convincing  the  other  side  that  they  would  have  to  capitu- 
late in  the  end.  So  Louis  could  be  fairly  regarded  as  a  war  leader  and 
one  who  was,  in  fact,  almost  constantly  at  war.  His  prestige  stood 
high  so  long  as  he  could  be  represented  as  victorious. 

Nationalism  was  the  force  that  lifted  Louis  to  such  an  unexampled 
height  of  power.  To  the  authority  of  paternity,  religion,  government 
and  war  leadership  he  could  add  the  growing  sentiment  which  made 
him  the  symbol  of  France  itself.  He  could  represent  a  growing  unity 

'  Monarchy.  A  Study  of  Louis  XIV.  Hilaire  Belloc.  London,  1938.  pp.  327-328. 


MONARCHY     AND     NATIONALISM  73 

within  a  defensible  frontier.  He  could  typify  French  resistance  to  the 
Habsburgs  and  the  old  idea  of  the  Empire.  His  was  not  the  power  of 
the  modern  dictator,  who  can  crush  all  opposition  by  force.  His  was 
rather  the  greater  prestige  of  one  with  whom  his  subjects  can  identify 
themselves.  His  magnificence  was  theirs,  his  palace  was  theirs,  his 
fame  was  that  of  France  and  so  theirs  again.  There  is  little  reason  for 
supposing  that  the  French  peasants  grudged  the  cost  of  Versailles. 
There  is  more  reason  to  suppose  that  they  gloried  in  it. 


CHAPTER    V 

Monarchy  justified  by  Divine  Right 


WE  must  not  expect  to  find  arguments  set  forth  to  justify 
monarchy  in  countries  or  during  periods  which  offered  no 
possible  alternative.  Monarchy  is  perhaps  the  more  established 
when  it  is  not  justified  but  merely  assumed.  This  was  not  true  of 
medieval  Europe.  From  as  early,  however,  as  the  fifth  century  a.d., 
monarchy  was  one  alternative  among  other  formsof  rule.  There  were 
propagandists,  moreover,  who  upheld  the  royal  authority.  One  of 
these,  quoted  by  Jonas  of  Orleans  and  Hincmar  of  Rheims,  adjured 
the  king: 

to  prevent  theft;  to  punish  adultery;  not  to  exalt  the  wicked  to 
power;  not  to  nourish  unchaste  persons  and  actors;  to  destroy  the 
wicked  from  the  face  of  the  earth  ...  to  defend  churches  .  .  .  not  to 
give  ear  to  the  superstitions  of  magicians,  soothsayers  and  pythonesses; 
to  put  away  anger  ...  to  hold  the  Catholic  faith  in  God  .  .  .  etc.^ 

The  duties,  which  are  stated,  indicate  the  powers,  which  are 
implied.  But  better  arguments  for  monarchy  come,  as  might  be 
expected,  from  England,  where  a  national  monarchy  was  first 
extablished.  The  earlier  of  two  notable  propagandists  was  the 
anonymous  author  of  several  treatises  written  between  1080  and 
1 104.  He  may  have  been  from  that  date  in  the  household 
of  the  Archbishop  of  York.-^  This  author  would  make  the  King 
God's  Representative,  with  bishops  and  clergy  his  subordinates.  The 
King,  he  says,  is  'Vicar  of  God'  as  from  his  coronation  and  the  Pope 
is  only  Bishop  of  Rome.  The  later  and  more  moderate  advocate  of 
kingship  is  John  of  Salisbury,  author  of  PoUcraticus  or  The  States- 
man s  Book  (of  1159)  and  a  friend  of  Pope  Adrian  IV.  He  wrote  as 
follows: — 

For  myself  I  am  satisfied  and  persuaded  that  loyal  shoulders  should 
uphold  the  power  of  the  ruler;  and  not  only  do  I  submit  to  his  power 
patiently,  but  with  pleasure,  so  long  as  it  is  exercised  in  subjection  to 
God  and  follows  His  ordinances.  But  on  the  other  hand  if  it  resists 
and  opposes  the  divine  commandments  and  wishes  to  make  me  share 

'  Tlie  Statesman's  Bootc  of  Jolui  of  Salisbury.  Trans,  by  John  Dickinson.  New  York, 
1927.  Introduction,  p.  liii. 

'  Autliorilv  and  Reason  in  tlie  Earlv  Middle  Ages.  A.  J.  Macdonald.  Oxford,  1933. 
p.  115. 

74 


MONARCHY     JUSTIFIED     BY     DIVINE     RIGHT  75 

in  its  war  against  God;  then  with  unrestrained  voice  I  answer  back 
that  God  must  be  preferred  before  any  man  on  earth.  Therefore 
inferiors  should  cleave  and  cohere  to  their  superiors,  and  all  the  limbs 
should  be  in  subjection  to  the  head;  but  always  and  only  on  condition 
that  religion  is  kept  inviolate.  .  .  . 

.  .  .  whatsoever  is  attempted  foully  and  with  malice  against  the  head,  or 
corporate  community,  of  the  members,  is  a  crime  of  the  greatest 
gravity  and  nearest  to  sacrilege;  for  as-the  latter  is  an  attempt  against 
God,  so  the  former  is  an  attack  upon  theprince,  who  is  admitted  to  be 
as  it  were  the  likeness  of  deity  upon  earth. ^ 

In  fact,  a  principal  medieval  argument  for  kingship  was  based  on 
the  belief  that  Heaven  is  a  Monarchy  and  that  Earth  should  be  the 
same.  All  earthly  lordship,  as  Gierke  writes,  was  'a  limited  rep- 
resentation of  the  divine  Lordship  of  the  world'.'-  The  analogy  of 
head  and  members  was  also  a  favourite  medieval  metaphor;  and 
there  are  University  Heads  of  Departments  even  now. 

An  even  greater  medieval  political  thinker  was  St.  Thomas  Aquinas 
himself  (1227-1274)  who  in  his  De  Regimine  Principum  analysed 
forms  of  government  very  much  as  Aristotle  had  done  but  with  this 
difference  that  he  regarded  the  State  as  serving  the  individual  and  not 
the  other  way  about.  He  too  defends  monarchy  (preferably  elective) 
provided  that  its  claims  do  not  conflict  with  those  of  the  Church. 
,His  argument  runs  thus: — 
/ 

.  .  .  That  is  best  which  most  nearly  approaches  a  natural  process,  since 
nature  always  works  in  the  best  way.  Among  members  of  the  body  there 
is  one  which  moves  all  the  rest,  namely  the  heart:  in  the  soul  there  is 
one  faculty  which  is  pre-eminent,  namely,  reason.  The  bees  have  one 
king,  and  in  the  whole  universe  there  is  one  God,  Creator  and  Lord 
of  all  .  .  .  it  follows  of  necessity  that  the  best  form  of  government  in 
human  society  is  that  which  is  exercised  by  one  person.^ 

But  St.  Thomas's  monarch  has  the  support  of  the  Church  only 
while  subordinate  to  it.  For  the  object  of  the  people  in  forming  a 
society  is  to  live  virtuously  and  'come  to  the  enjoyment  of  God'.  The 
lay  ruler  cannot  lead  them  to  this  and  'under  Christ's  Law,  kings 
must  be  subject  to  priests'.'*  So  it  happened  that  the  lay  rulers  of 
Rome  came,  by  divine  providence,  to  be  the  subjects  of  the  Pope. 
How  could  the  Kingdom  of  God  be  otherwise  ruled? 

.  .  .  The  administration  of  this  Kingdom  has  been  committed,  not  to 
the  kings  of  this  world,  but  to  priests,  in  order  that  the  spiritual  should 

The  Statesman's  Book  of  John  of  Salisburv.  Trans,  by  John  Dickinson.  New  York, 
1927.  Chap.  XXV.  pp.  258-259. 

"^Legacy  of  the  Middle  Ages.  p.  518. 

^  Aquinas.  Selected  political  writings.  Ed.  A.  P.  D'Entreves.  Trans.  J.  G.  Dawson. 
Oxford,  1948.  pp.  12-13. 

*  Aquinas,  op.  cit.  pp.  12-13. 


76  THE    EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

be  distinct  from  the  temporal ;  and  above  all  to  the  Sovereign  Roman 
Pontiff,  the  Successor  of  Peter,  the  Vicar  of  Christ,  to  whom  all  the 
kings  of  Christian  people  should  be  subject  as  to  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ  Himself.^ 

There  are,  he  argued,  two  orders  of  kingship,  but  the  spiritual  is 
supreme  over  the  temporal  and  the  Pope  has  the  power  to  deprive  a 
sovereign,  by  excommunication,  of  the  right  to  rule.  On  this  subject, 
where  St.  Thomas  was  moderate,  other  Papal  supporters  were  violent. 
Some,  like  Manegold  of  Lautenbach  argued  that  King  and  Emperor 
could  alike  be  removed  by  the  people  themselves  for  misconduct. 

If  one  should  engage  a  man  for  a  fair  wage  to  tend  swine,  and  he  find 
means  not  to  tend  but  to  steal  or  slay  them,  would  not  one  remove  him 
from  his  charge?^ 

Others,  and  Innocent  III  among  them,  were  intent  to  show  that 
Charlemagne  was  given  his  Empire  by  the  Pope  and  that  the  Empire, 
whenever  vacant,  reverted  to  the  Pope  again.  It  was  Augustin  Trionfo 
(in  the  reign  of  John  XXII)  who  went  further  than  this,  maintaining^ 
that  the  Pope  is  supreme  and  that  from  his  will  there  is  no  appeal, 
not  even  to  God.  The  Pope,  by  his  theory,  could  depose  any  Emperor 
and  choose  another.  Ptolemy  of  Lucca  (who  completed  St.  Thomas's 
book)  maintains  that  the  Pope  is  Emperor  by  right  and  merely  dele- 
gates his  authority  to  laymen."^  The  claims  on  this  score  of  Boniface 
VIII,  who  triumphed  over  the  Emperor,  went  even  beyond  those  of 
Innocent  III. 

These  extreme  views  of  Papal  authority  became  more  difficult  to 
sustain  after  1305,  when  there  was  a  rival  French  Pope  set  up  at 
Avignon.  Pierre  du  Bois,  writing  at  that  time  (c.  1307),  wanted  to 
destroy  the  temporal  power  of  Church  and  Pope.  He  wished,  in 
effect,  to  make  the  King  of  France  the  ruler  of  Christendom,  or 
perhaps  even  Emperor.  He  desired  to  confiscate  church  property  and 
set  up  a  League  of  Nations  and  International  Courts  of  Law.  His 
De  Recuperatione  Terrae  Sanctae  is  a  remarkably  prophetic  book. 
Pierre  du  Bois  looks  to  the  future  while  his  contemporary,  Dante 
Alighieri,  looks  only  to  the  past.  But  Dante's  De  Monarchia  (c.  1309), 
written  as  it  was  in  a  lost  cause,  is  interesting  as  a  reflection  of  what 
Imperial  protagonists  had  been  no  doubt  arguing  long  before. 
Writes  Dante: 

Now  it  is  admitted  that  the  whole  human  race  is  ordained  for  a 

'  The  Social  and  Political  Ideas  of  some  great  Medieval  Thinkers.  Ed.  by  F.  J.  C. 
Hearnshaw.  London,  1923.  p.  lOL 

*  Illustrations  of  the  History  of  Medieval  Thought  and  Learning.  Reginald  Lane  Poole. 
London,  1932.  p.  203. 

^  Poole,  op.  cii.  pp.  222-223. 

'  Cainbi tdge  Medieval  History.  Vol.  VI.  p.  632. 


MONARCHY    JUSTIFIED     BY     DIVINE     RIGHT  77 

single  end,  as  was  set  forth  before.  Therefore  there  must  be  one  guiding 
or  ruling  power.  And  this  is  what  we  mean  by  monarch  or  emperor. 
Thus  it  appears  that  for  the  well-being  of  the  world  there  must  be  a 
monarchy  or  empire.^ 

But  this  argument  from  necessity  is  the  least  part  of  his  case.  He 
shows  that  the  Roman  Empire  'in  subjecting  the  world  to  itself,  did 
so  by  right';-  a  right  proved  above  all  by  the  fact  of  Christ  choosing 
to  be  born  under  Roman  rule  and  at  a  moment  chosen  'in  order  that 
the  Son  of  God,  made  man,  might  be  enrolled  as  a  man  in  that 
unique  register  of  the  human  race'  that  Augustus  had  ordered. 
'Christ,  then,  gave  assurance  by  deed  that  the  edict  of  Augustus  .  .  . 
was  just', — and  hence  that  the  Romans  ruled  with  God's  consent. 
Nor  is  the  Pope  an  intermediary.  The  Emperor's  authority  comes 
directly  to  him  from  God — 'descends  upon  him  without  any  mean 
from  the  fountain  of  universal  authority'. ■' 

Rather  later  than  Dante  (in  1324)  came  Marsiglio  with  his 
^Defensor  Pacis"^  which  does  not  stop  at  merely  defending  elective 
monarchy  as  a  necessary  expedient  or  a  thing  approved  by  God.  He 
attacks  Papal  pretensions  to  rule  at  all,  maintaining  that  'the  power 
of  the  clergy  is  .  .  .  not  only  restricted  to  spiritual  affairs:  it  can  only 
be  given  effect  to  by  spiritual  means'.  There  is  nothing  coercive  about 
the  Gospel  and  all  texts  which  may  seem  to  authorise  the  temporal 
power  or  jurisdiction  of  the  clergy  are  flatly  contradicted  by  the  text 
'My  kingdom  is  not  of  this  world'.  Marsiglio  was  propagandist  for 
the  Emperor  against  John  XXII  but  his  arguments  are  practically 
those  of  the  Reformation. 

Medieval  political  thinkers  were  relatively  few  and  it  would  be 
rash,  no  doubt,  to  base  too  many  theories  on  the  few  of  their  works 
that  have  survived.  It  would  seem,  however,  that  they  could  find  good 
cause  to  support  monarchy  but  differed  from  each  other  as  to  the 
proper  relations  which  should  exist  between  King  and  Church. 
While  the  more  nationally  minded  in  England,  and  later  in  France, 
were  eager  to  invest  the  King  with  religious  powers,  it  is  clear  that 
actual  kings  were  always  controlled,  in  some  measure,  by  the  Church, 
and  often  handicapped  by  their  own  lack  of  knowledge.^  John  of 
Salisbury  urges  that  a  prince  should  always  be  able  to  read.  'If, 
nevertheless,  out  of  consideration  for  other  distinguished  virtues,  it 

'  A  Translation  of  the  Latin  Works  of  Dante  Alighieri.  Temple  Classics.  1934.  De 
Monarchia.  p.  141. 

^  Dante,  op.  cii.  p.  195. 

^  Dante,  op.  cit.  p.  279. 

*  Lane  Poole,  op.  cit.  p.  230  et  scq.  See  also  Legacy  of  the  Middle  Ages.  p.  520. 
The  Defensor  Pads  was  written  by  Marsiglio  of  Padua  and  John  of  Jandun,  'two  pupils 
of  damnation'. 

'  But  the  king  was  not  exactly  a  layman  either.  See  Kingship  and  Law  in  the  Middle 
Ages.  F.  Kern.  Trans,  by  S.  B.  Chrimes.  Oxford,  1948.  p.  38. 


78  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

should  chance  that  the  prince  is  illiterate,  it  is  needful  that  he  take 
counsel  of  men  of  letters  if  his  affairs  are  to  prosper  rightly'/  And 
where  would  he  find  men  of  letters,  save  in  the  Church?  But  if  the 
king  were  thus  limited  in  power,  the  consensus  of  opinion  was  in 
favour  of  monarchy  as  such.  The  most  fervent  advocates  of  Papal 
power  and  clerical  privilege  were  far,  as  a  rule,  from  demanding  the 
abolition  of  kingship.  In  proclaiming  that  kings  should  be  subordi- 
nate they  implied  at  least  that  kings  should  exist. 

Last  of  the  medieval  thinkers  we  should  notice  is  Nicolo  Machia- 
velli  who  was  born  in  1469  and  was  therefore  about  25  when  Italy 
was  invaded  by  the  French,  the  Italian  tov/ns  and  castles  falling  before 
a  relatively  novel  use  of  artillery.  Machiavelli  held  public  office  in 
Florence  from  1494  to  1512,  and  was  then  sent  into  exile.  First  fruit 
of  his  leisure  was  his  book  The  Prince,  completed  in  1513.  It  contains 
maxims  of  statecraft  based  on  the  tortuous  byways  of  Italian  politics 
and  is  interesting  in  that  it  illustrates  how  completely  dead  were 
Medieval  ideals  in  Italy  before  anything  new  was  invented  to  replace 
them.  Obsessed  by  the  contrast  between  the  glories  of  ancient  Rome 
and  the  futile  impotence  of  the  Italian  States  he  knew,  Machiavelli 
demanded  a  restoration  of  everything  ancient.  Apart  from  that,  he 
completely  mistook  the  causes  of  the  Italian  failure  in  war  and 
diplomacy.  Nor  do  his  subtle  maxims  foreshadow  the  behaviour  of 
the  new  kings  of  the  newly  consolidated  nation  states.  These  kings 
were  feeling  their  way  towards  a  new  conception  of  monarchy,  and 
it  was  before  this  new  reality  that  all  the  Italian  subtleties  would  be 
blown  away  like  cobwebs. 

The  Reformation  had  much  to  do  with  it.  The  kings  who  denied 
Papal  authority  and  confiscated  Church  lands  added  the  powers  of 
Pope  to  the  powers  of  King  and  used  both  to  stamp  out  feudalism. 
But  the  Papacy  was  so  weakened  by  this  defection  that  the  Catholic 
Kings  gained  an  almost  equal  independence  as  the  reward  for  their 
loyalty.  Nationalism,  in  this  religious  aspect,  was  not  a  movement 
inspired  by  kings  for  their  own  benefit.  It  was  a  genuine  movement 
among  people  who  willingly  invested  their  national  king  with  the 
powers  of  Emperor,  Pope,  Church  and  Peerage.  So  far  from  being  the 
unscrupulous  and  futile  Prince  of  Machiavelli's  imagining,  the 
sixteenth  century  king  became  far  more  than  a  man.  He  was  to  em- 
body in  himself  the  whole  territory  he  ruled,  focussing  its  divergent 
provinces,  centralising  its  language  and  moulding  its  peoples  into  one. 
Shakespeare  illustrates  this  process  in  Henry  V,  showing  not  merely 
the  sixteenth  century  glory  of  kingship  but  the  almost  intolerable 
burden  of  responsibility  which  the  king  had  now  assumed. 

'  The  Statesman's  Book  of  John  of  Salisburv.  Trans,  by  John  Dickenson.  New  York, 
1927. 


MONARCHY     JUSTIFIED     BY     DIVINE     RIGHT  79 

Upon  the  king!  let  us  our  lives,  our  souls 
Our  debts,  our  careful  wives 
Our  children,  and  our  sins  lay  on  the  king! 
We  must  bear  all.  O  hard  condition ! 
Twin-born  with  greatness,  subject  to  the  breath 
Of  every  fool,  whose  sense  no  more  can  feel 
But  his  own  wringing.  What  infinite  heart's  ease 
Must  kings  neglect  that  private  men  enjoy! 
And  what  have  kings  that  privates  have  not  too 
Save  ceremony,  save  general  ceremony  ?  .  .  .  . 
'Tis  not  the  balm,  the  sceptre  and  the  ball, 
The  sword,  the  mace,  the  crown  imperial.  ... 

Note  the  expressions  used  'our  souls'  (hitherto  the  affair  of  the 
Church),  'the  balm'  (of  Coronation),  and  'the  crown  imperial'. 
Shakespeare  was  watching  the  birth  of  a  new  idea;  that  of  sovereignty 
on  the  national  scale;  the  unchecked  sovereignty  of  the  king. 

It  did  not  at  first  seem  inevitable  that  nationalism  would  produce  a 
kingship  of  this  kind.  Sir  Thomas  More,  born  in  1478,  almost  alone 
among  political  thinkers  in  having  a  practical  knowledge  of  govern- 
ment, makes  his  Utopia  a  national  state  but  with  a  ruler  elected 
merely  for  life.  His  returned  traveller  thinks  that  'the  kingdom  of 
France  alone  is  almost  greater  than  that  it  may  well  be  governed  by 
one  man'  and  that  a  French  King  would  be  foolish  to  seek  more 
territory  elsewhere.  He  assumes  that  France,  like  Utopia,  should  be 
a  national  state.  Luther  firmly  supported  any  prince  against  any 
rebellion  and,  after  1531,  held  that  it  was  for  the  ruler  to  put  down 
false  doctrine,  Erasmus,  by  contrast,  pleaded  for  a  limited  monarchy 
but  did  so  before  a  dwindling  audience.^  The  age  of  Divine  Right  had 
already  dawned. 

In  the  published  works  of  James  I  of  England  we  find  the  theory  of 
Divine  Right  explained  by  one  who  professed  to  inherit  it.  Beginning 
his  theorising  in  1598,  he  explained  that  the  King  is  God's  minister 
and  lieutenant  and  monarchy  the  form  of  government  nearest  to  that 
of  heaven.^  The  hereditary  king  is  responsible  to  God,  not  to  his 
people,  nor  to  the  Laws.  Resistance  to  a  lawful  monarch  is  against 
Holy  Scripture,  even  should  he  rule  wickedly.  As  time  went  on  and  as 
he  met  opposition,  James  put  his  claims  in  an  even  more  extreme 
form.  'The  state  of  monarchy',  he  declared  in  1609,  'is  the  supremest 
thing  on  earth'.  Kings  are  justly  called  gods,  for  their  powers  are  a 
replica  of  the  Divine  omnipotence.  Like  God  they  may  'make  and 
unmake  their  subjects  .  .  .  they  have  power  of  raising  and  casting 

'  Erasmus  and  the  Northern  Renaissance.  M.  M.  Phillips.  London,  1949.  Chap.  4. 
p.  123  et  seq. 

^  The  Social  and  Political  Ideas  of  some  great  Thinkers  of  the  \6th  and  Mth  Centuries. 
Ed.  by  F.  J.  C.  Hearnshaw.  London,  1926.  Chapter  V.  pp.  105-129. 


80  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

downe;  of  life  and  of  death.  ,  .  .  They  have  power  to  exalt  low  things 
and  abase  high  things,  and  make  of  their  subjects  like  men  at  the 
chesse.  .  .  .'James  carried  this  doctrine  to  its  limit  as  only  a  Protestant 
might.  'It  is  atheisme  and  blasphemic  to  dispute  what  God  can  doe, 
so  it  is  presumption  and  high  contempt  in  a  subject,  to  dispute  what 
a  King  can  doe.  .  .  .' 

It  is  too  commonly  assumed  that  claims  such  as  these  were  uni- 
versally resented  from  the  first.  They  were  not  alien,  however,  to  the 
author  of  Henry  V,  nor  presumably  to  the  audience  for  which  his 
plays  were  produced.  The  divinity  attaching  to  the  monarch  seems  to 
have  been  welcome,  in  fact,  so  long  as  there  was  another  and  foreign 
monarch  to  oppose.  Divine  Right  was  always  acceptable  if  it  were  the 
right  to  claim  God's  help  against  the  alien.  Erasmus  was  quick  to 
notice  how  ardent  were  the  clergy  in  preaching: 

...  a  just,  a  religious,  or  a  holy  war.  And  which  is  yet  more  wonderful, 
they  make  it  to  be  God's  Cause  on  both  sides.  God  fights  for  us,  is  the 
cry  of  the  French  pulpits;  and  what  have  they  to  fear  that  have  the 
Lord  of  Hosts  for  their  Protector? — Acquit  yourselves  like  men,  say 
the  English  and  the  Spaniard,  and  the  victory  is  certain;  for  this  is 
God's  cause,  not  Caesar's.  .  .  } 

As  against  the  divinely  guided  Philip  II  of  Spain,  Elizabeth  could 
not  be  invested  with  too  much  divine  authority.  Once  this  had  been 
done,  however,  it  was  not  easy  (at  least  in  logic)  to  deny  the  same 
divinity  to  a  duly  anointed  successor — and  even  to  one  at  peace  with 
Spain.  The  English  clergy  in  1640  agreed  that 

'The  most  high  and  sacred  order  of  kings  is  of  Divine  Right,  being 
the  ordinance  of  God  Himself,  founded  in  the  prime  laws  of  nature,  and 
clearly  established  by  express  texts  both  of  the  Old  and  New  Testa- 
ments'.- 

As  late  as  1681  we  find  the  University  of  Cambridge  conceding  to 
Charles  II,  in  a  public  address,  exactly  the  authority  claimed  by 
James  I. 

We  still  believe  and  maintain  that  our  kings  derive  not  their  title 
from  the  people  but  from  God;  that  it  belongs  not  to  subjects,  either 
to  create  or  censure  but  to  honour  and  obey  their  sovereign,  who 
comes  to  be  so  by  a  fundamental  hereditary  right  of  succession,  which 
no  religion,  no  law,  no  fault  or  forfeiture  can  alter  or  diminish.^ 

Nor  should  it  be  assumed  that  responsibility  towards  God  was,  in 
the  seventeenth  century,  a  mere  form  of  words.  It  was  not  a  way  of 

'  Social  and  Political  Ideas  of  the  Renaissance  and  RefonnUion.  Fd.  F.  J.  C.  Hcarn- 
shaw.  p.  168. 

'The  Divine  Right  of  Kings.  J.  N.  Figgis.  Cambridge,  1922.  p.  142. 
"  The  Seventeenth  Century.  G.  N.  Clark,  p.  224. 


MONARCHY     JUSTIFIED     BY     DIVINE     RIGHT  81 

saying  that  the  King  was  not  responsible  at  all.  His  responsibility  was 
heavy  and  the  average  king  v/as  well  aware  of  it.  He  might  be 
allowed  a  divine  sanction  coupled  with  an  absolute  power  but  that 
divine  sanction  in  itself  set  bounds  to  the  way  in  which  the  power 
might  be  used.  His  power  was  limited  not  so  much  by  any  political 
opposition  as  by  the  very  nature  of  his  office.  Although,  as  we  shall 
see,  there  were  practical  arguments  used  in  favour  of  kingship,  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  it  was  the  appeal  to  Holy  Writ  which  carried 
more  weight  among  the  people  at  large.  Nationalism  and  Divine 
Right  were  basically  the  same  idea,  the  latter  always  acceptable  when 
the  former  was  in  danger. 


CHAPTER    VI 

Monarchy  justified  by  Expedience 


IT  was  not  until  republicanism  appeared  in  religious  guise  that 
arguments,  other  than  religious,  were  needed  to  justify  kingship. 
Calvin's  arrival  in  Switzerland  in  1534  heralded  the  setting  up  there  of 
a  Calvinist  Republic  at  Geneva.  Calvin  converted  what  was  already 
an  oligarchy  of  merchants  into  a  protestant  theocracy.  The  Genevan 
magistrates  were  to  see  to  it  that  God  was  obeyed,  defaulters  punished 
and  heretics  killed.  Henceforth  it  might  well  be  insufficient,  at  least  in 
protestant  circles,  to  show  that  monarchy  was  approved  by  God.  It 
could  not  even  be  shown  that  monarchy  was  approved  by  all  godly 
persons,  for  this  was  no  longer  true.  It  became  increasingly  necessary 
to  find  other  arguments  by  which  godly  believers  in  Monarchy  might 
convince  equally  godly  republicans.  There  had  to  be  an  appeal  to 
reason  and  the  number  gradually  increased  (in  the  later  seventeenth 
century)  of  those  to  whose  reason  an  appeal  could  be  hopefully 
addressed.  A  few  of  those  who  had  fought  over  monarchy  in  youth 
were  willing  to  discuss  its  merits  and  defects  in  middle  age. 

First  of  these  pure  theorists  was  Jean  Bodin,  born  in  1529,  whose 
Six  books  of  the  Republic^  date  from  1576.  Bodin  was  a  law  teacher 
and  advocate  who  held  a  position  at  one  time  in  the  household  of  the 
Due  d'Alengon.  He  may  have  been  a  protestant  at  one  period  but 
later  became  a  freethinker.  He  wrote  in  defence  of  the  French 
Monarchy,  which  was  hardly  then  established.  His  ideas  are  some- 
what confused  but  he  argues,  first  and  foremost,  that  there  must  be 
a  sovereign  power  in  the  State  and  that  this  power  must  be  vested  in 
the  King.  A  group,  he  maintains,  cannot  have  a  will. 

In  a  democracy  sovereignty  is  vested  in  a  majority:  and  a  majority 
is  not  only,  at  best,  an  ignorant,  foolish  and  emotional  mob,  but  shifts 
continually  and  alters  from  year  to  year.- 

He  thus  dismisses  the  idea  of  democracy,  pointing  out  that  men  are 
unequal  and  that  there  is  less  real  liberty  in  a  democracy  than  under 
any  other  form  of  rule.  'True  popular  liberty  consists  in  nothing  else 
than  ability  to  enjoy  one's  goods  in  peace,  fearing  not  at  all  for  one's 

'  The  Social  and  Political  Ideas  of  some  great  Thinkers  of  the  \6th  and  17  th  Centuries. 
Ed.  by  F.  J.  C.  Hearnshaw.  London,  1926.  See  pp.  42-62. 

-  A  Historv  of  Political  Thought  in  the  Sixteenth  Century.  J.  W.  Allen.  London,  1951. 

pp.  437,  483. 

82 


MONARCHY    JUSTIFIED     BY     EXPEDIHNCE  83 

life  and  honour  or  that  of  one's  wife  and  family'.  Nor  is  he  more 
inchned  to  favour  an  aristocratic  State  which  he  thinks  will  certainly 
be  ruined  by  the  feuds  and  jealousies  of  its  members.  Only  a  monarch 
can  ensure  order  and  none  but  a  monarch  can  create  any  sense  of 
unity.  So  Bodin  bases  his  plea  for  monarchy,  not  on  God  but  on  the 
nature  of  things;  one  of  the  things  being  private  property.  Arguments 
such  as  these  were  still  more  or  less  heretical  and  Thomas  Hobbes, 
using  similar  reasoning  at  a  far  later  date,  was  promptly  dubbed  an 
atheist.  As  mathematical  tutor  to  Charles  II,  he  was  once  free  to 
expound  his  ideas  before  a  fairly  attentive  audience.  Charles's 
subsequent  views  were  more  akin  to  those  of  Hobbes  than  to  those 
of  James  I. 

Hobbes  begins  his  argument  in  Leviathan  (165!)  by  supposing  that 
men  were  once  in  'a  state  of  nature'.  Complete  liberty  for  all  then 
makes  peace  impossible.  Men  thus  live  in  chaos,  war  and  fear. 

In  such  condition,  there  is  no  place  for  Industry;  because  the  fruit 
thereof  is  uncertain;  and  consequently  no  Culture  of  the  Earth,  no 
Navigation,  nor  use  of  the  commodities  that  may  be  imported  by  Sea; 
no  commodious  Building;  no  instruments  of  moving,  and  removing 
such  things  as  require  much  force;  no  knowledge  of  the  face  of  the 
Earth;  no  account  of  time;  no  arts;  no  Letters;  no  Society;  and  which 
is  worst  of  all,  continuall  feare,  and  danger  of  violent  death.  .  .  } 

To  escape  from  this  misery,  men  agree  (as  reason  suggests)  to  laws. 
It  is  found,  however,  that  the  self-interest  of  individuals  leads  to  the 
laws  being  broken.  Men  cannot  be  bound  by  words.  Laws,  to  be 
useful,  must  be  enforced.  They  need,  therefore,  a  Common  Power 
for  defence  against  foreigners  and  against  each  other.  Such  a  power 
can  result  only  from  each  individual  surrendering  a  part  of  his 
natural  rights,  to  be  vested  in  one  man  or  one  assembly,  to  which  all 
must  then  submit  their  will  and  their  judgment. 

This  is  more  than  Consent  or  Concord;  it  is  a  real  Unity  of  them  all, 
in  one  and  the  same  Person,  made  by  Covenant  of  every  man  with 
every  man,  in  such  a  manner  as  if  every  man  should  say  to  every  man, 
I  authorise  and  give  my  Right  of  Governing  myselfe,  to  this  Man,  or 
to  this  Assembly  of  Men,  on  this  condition,  that  thou  give  up  thy  right 
to  him,  and  authorise  all  his  Actions  in  like  manner.  This  done,  the 
Multitude  so  united  in  one  Person  is  called  a  Common-Wealth.  .  .  . 
This  is  the  Generation  of  that  great  LEVIATHAN,  or  rather  (to  speak 
more  reverently)  of  that  Mortal  God,  to  which  we  owe  under  the 
Immortal  God,  our  peace  and  defence.  .  .  .  And  he  that  carrieth  this 
Person  is  called  SOVERAIGN  and  said  to  have  Soveraign  Power; 
and  every  one  besides,  his  SUBJECT.^ 

Hobbes  is  careful  to  explain  that  the  Sovereign  himself  (or  itself)  is 

'  Leviathan.  Thomas  Hobbes.  Everyman  Edition,  1937.  pp.  64-65. 
'  Leviathan,  p.  91. 


84  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

no  party  to  the  contract.  The  subjects  have  made  an  agreement  v^ith 
each  other,  not  with  him.  He  cannot  break  the  contract  for  he  has 
made  none.  He  could  make  no  agreement  with  the  multitude  as  a 
contracting  body  for  it  did  not  exist  as  such  until  the  contract  was 
made.  He  could  make  no  agreement  with  the  individuals  singly  which 
would  not  be  void  as  a  result  of  their  subsequent  agreement  among 
themselves.  His  rule,  therefore,  is  absolute  and  he  has  promised 
nothing.  As  against  that,  the  subject  has  surrendered  only  political 
rights,  retaining  his  essential  freedom: 

.  .  .  such  as  is  the  Liberty  to  buy  and  sell,  and  otherwise  contract 
with  one  another,  to  choose  their  own  aboad,  their  own  diet,  their 
own  trade  of  life,  and  institute  their  children  as  they  themselves 
think  fit. 

While  thus  enumerating  almost  the  exact  rights  which  the  modern 
citizen  has  so  largely  lost,  he  reserves  to  the  Sovereign  the  control  of 
religion,  reminding  us  of  one  of  the  few  freedoms  which  the  modern 
citizen  has  retained. 

Hobbes'  Leviathan  could  be  an  assembly  but  he  usually  assumes 
that  it  will  be  a  King.  He  does  not  regard  the  contract  or  covenant 
between  subjects  as  an  historical  fact  so  much  as  an  implied  agree- 
ment. Whatever  may  be  thought  of  this  theory,  Hobbes  puts  the  case 
for  sovereignty  and  shows  that,  with  religion  nationalised,  there  can 
be  no  legal  limit  to  the  powers  of  the  Sovereign.  He  shows  that, 
whatever  the  tyranny  of  the  ruler,  it  is  preferable  to  the  tyranny  of 
men  over  each  other  in  a  state  of  anarchy.  He  thus  provides  a  reasoned 
basis  for  monarchy,  claiming  too  that  reason  in  political  matters 
should  prevail. 

The  skill  of  making  and  maintaining  Commonwealths,  consisteth 
in  certain  Rules,  as  doth  arithmetique  and  Geometry;  not  (as  Tennis- 
play)  on  Practise  onely:  which  Rules,  neither  poor  men  have  the 
leisure,  nor  men  that  have  the  leisure,  have  hitherto  had  the  curiosity, 
or  the  method  to  find  out.^ 

It  is  a  mathematician's  approach  and  not  acceptable  even  now.  At 
the  time,  the  arguments  of  a  reputed  atheist  would  carry  little  weight. 
His  reasoning  was  far  less  acceptable  than  the  awful  logic  of  James  I's 
teaching;  that  logic  which  led  his  son  to  execution. 

Although  Sir  Robert  Filmer  lived  from  1588  to  1653,  his  chief 
work,  Patriarcha,  was  not  published  until  1680,  when  it  was  used  to 
justify  the  personal  rule  of  Charles  II.'-  The  doctrine  of  Divine  Right 
had  suffered  under  the  Commonwealth,  and  the  Restoration  of 

^Leviathan.  Thomas  Hobbes.  Everyman  Edition,  1937.  p.  110. 
=  Patriarcha  and  other  Political  Works.  Sir  Robert  Filmer.  Ed.  by  Peter  Laslett. 
Oxford,  1949. 


MONARCHY     JUSTIFIED     BY     EXPEDIENCE  85 

Charles  II  had  been  brought  about  by  those  whose  behef  in  monarchy 
was  of  a  severely  practical  kind.  Filmer's  arguments  suited  the  Tory 
mood  of  the  moment  and  were  untainted  by  atheism.  Filmer  had 
written  primarily  to  deny  Bellarmine's  thesis  that  'Secular  or  civil 
power  is  instituted  by  men;  it  is  in  the  people  unless  they  bestow  it  on 
a  Prince'.  This  Filmer  refuted  by  writing: 

I  see  not  then  how  the  children  of  Adam,  or  of  any  man  else,  can  be 
free  from  subjection  to  their  parents.  And  this  subordination  of 
children  is  the  fountain  of  all  regal  authority,  by  the  ordination  of 
God  himself  From  whence  it  follows  that  civil  power,  not  only  in 
general  is  by  Divine  institution,  but  even  the  assigning  of  it  specifically 
to  the  eldest  parent.  Which  quite  takes  away  that  new  and  common 
distinction  which  refers  only  power  universal  or  absolute  to  God,  but 
power  respective  in  regard  of  the  special  form  of  government  to  the 
choice  of  the  people.  Nor  leaves  it  any  place  for  such  imaginary 
pactions  between  Kings  and  their  people  as  many  dream  of.^ 

Here  Filmer  is  on  firm  ground.  For  whatever  weight  we  may  give 
(or  not  give)  to  the  Bible  as  the  word  of  God,  we  must  concede  it 
some  authority  as  anthropology.  That  paternal  rule  is  a  fact  is  as 
clear  as  that  the  theory  of  contract  is  only  a  theory.  We  need  not 
follow  Filmer,  however,  in  tracing  the  ancestry  of  Kings  by  the  elder 
Hne  to  Adam.  Nor  need  we  conclude,  as  he  does,  that  to  deny  the 
rights  of  elder  sons  is  to  land  oneself  in  'the  desperate  inconveniences' 
of  communism. 

Filmer  then  goes  on-  to  show  from  history  the  imperfections  of 
Democracy  as  compared  with  Monarchy : — 

Indeed,  the  world  for  a  long  time  knew  no  other  sort  of  government 
but  only  monarchy.  The  best  order,  the  greatest  strength,  the  most 
stability  and  easiest  government  are  to  be  found  in  monarchy,  and  in 
no  other  form  of  government.  The  new  platform  of  common-weals 
were  first  hatched  in  a  corner  of  the  world,  amongst  a  few  cities  of 
Greece,  which  have  been  imitated  by  very  few  other  places.  Those  very 
cities  were  first  for  many  years  governed  by  Kings,  until  wantonness, 
ambition  or  faction  made  them  attempt  new  kinds  of  regiment.  All 
which  mutations  proved  most  bloody  and  miserable  to  the  authors  of 
them,  happy  in  nothing  but  that  they  continued  but  a  small  time. 

He  goes  on  to  consider  the  history  of  Rome,  denying  that  it  was  a 
Republic  for  more  than  480  years,  at  most,  and  showing  that  the  great 
achievements  of  Rome  date  in  fact  from  the  time  of  the  Emperors — - 
'For  no  democracy  can  extend  further  than  to  one  city'.  When  it 
does  extend  further: 

As  it  is  begot  by  sedition,  so  it  is  nourished  by  arms:  it  can  never 

'  Patriarcha.  Sir  Robei  t  Filmer.  p.  57. 
==  Ibid.  pp.  86-93. 


86  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

Stand  without  wars,  either  with  an  enemy  abroad,  or  with  friends  at 
home.  The  only  means  to  preserve  it  is  to  have  some  powerful  enemy 
near,  who  may  serve  instead  of  a  King  to  govern  it,  that  so,  though  they 
have  not  a  King  among  them,  yet  they  may  have  as  good  as  a  King 
over  them,  for  the  common  danger  of  an  enemy  keeps  them  in  better 
unity  than  the  laws  they  make  themselves. 

Events  of  the  seventeenth  century  went  some  way  towards  proving 
Filmer's  general  thesis  Popular  Government  more  Bloody  than  a 
Tyranny'.  Experience  seemed  to  show  that  monarchy  was  best. 
Neither  would  Filmer  have  the  king  other  than  sovereign.  In  his 
pamphlet  The  Anarchy  of  a  limited  or  mixed  Monarchy  he  denies  that 
the  king  can  either  share  his  power  or  submit  to  the  laws — which  are, 
after  all,  of  the  king's  making.  If  the  king's  power  is  to  be  restricted  by 
law,  who  is  to  enforce  the  law?  Whatever  the  answer,  sovereignty 
must  lie  in  the  enforcing  power,  not  the  king,  and  so  the  State  in  that 
event  is  not  a  monarchy  at  all.  He  takes  the  instance  of  Poland  and 
concludes  that  it  is  a  kind  of  republic. 

The  example  of  Poland,  added  to  the  example  of  the  Common- 
wealth in  England,  had  a  powerful  effect  on  later  seventeenth 
century  and  eighteenth  century  Europe;  a  far  greater  effect,  certainly, 
than  any  arguments  Filmer  could  take  from  Aristotle  or  the  Bible. 
During  the  eighteenth  century,  more  especially,  the  arguments  for 
monarchy  were  based  more  and  more  upon  its  practical  convenience, 
less  and  less  upon  its  divine  origin  and  sanction.  And  when  we  reach 
the  later  half  of  that  century,  the  age  of  the  enlightened  despots,  we 
find  that  the  kings  themselves  claimed  rather  to  be  efficient  than 
divinely  inspired.  Chief  of  the  enlightened  monarchs  was  Frederick 
the  Great,  who  despised  Christianity;  and  next  to  him  came  Catherine 
of  Russia,  a  usurper.  Both  were  admirers  of  Voltaire  and  of  reason, 
and  their  contemporaries  Charles  of  Naples,  Charles  III  of  Spain, 
Joseph  of  Portugal  and  George  III  of  England  and  Hanover,  could 
all  claim  to  be  enlightened  rulers  in  their  different  ways. 

Spokesman  for  enlightened  monarchy  was  Frederick  of  Prussia, 
from  whose  successive  works,  beginning  with  the  Antimachiavel  of 
1740,  we  gain  a  clear  idea  of  how  he  viewed  his  own  office.  Having 
dismissed  Christianity  with  these  words: 

An  old  metaphysical  romance,  filled  with  marvels,  contradictions 
and  absurdity,  born  in  the  ardent  imagination  of  Orientals,  has  spread 
into  our  Europe.  Enthusiasts  have  purveyed  it,  careerists  have 
pretended  to  accept  it,  imbeciles  have  believed  it.  {Second  Political 
Testament,  1768).^ 

— he  bases  his  monarchy  on  the  assertion  that  hereditary  rule  is  the 

'  Frederic/<  the  Great,  the  Ruler,  the  Writer,  the  Man.  G.  P.  Gooch.  London,  1947. 
See  Chapter  XIL 


MONARCHY    JUSTIFIED     BY     EXPEDIENCE  87 

easiest  system  to  work  and  that  republics  soon  collapse.  The  king  is 
no  more  than  a  man  and,  in  being  the  first  judge,  the  first  general  and 
the  first  financier,  is  at  the  same  time  essentially  the  first  servant. 
Clearest  statement  of  all  comes  in  the  Political  Testament  of  1752: — 

A  well  conducted  government  must  have  a  system  as  coherent  as  a 
system  of  philosophy,  so  that  finance,  policy  and  the  army  are  co- 
ordinated to  the  same  end,  namely,  the  consolidation  of  the  state  and 
the  increase  of  its  power.  Such  a  system  can  only  emanate  from  a 
single  brain,  that  of  the  sovereign.^ 

Frederick  and  his  contemporaries  mostly  took  their  ideas  from 
France  and,  in  particular,  largely  from  Voltaire.  The  works  of  Voltaire 
are  copious  but  he  wrote  no  single  volume  upon  politics.  It  is  easier, 
in  general,  to  discover  what  he  disliked  than  what  he  approved.  But 
while  his  attitude  towards  Frederick  was  not  always  cordial,  his 
support  of  enlightened  monarchy  was  fairly  consistent.  One  would 
search  in  vain  in  his  books  for  praise  directed  towards  any  other 
form  of  rule.  'Democracy'  he  writes  'seems  suitable  only  to  a  very 
little  country'.^ 

As  for  Equality: 

...  it  is  as  impossible  for  men  to  be  equal  as  it  is  impossible  for  .  .  . 
two  professors  in  theology  not  to  be  jealous  of  each  other.^ 

He  continues,  moreover: — 

The  human  race,  such  as  it  is,  cannot  subsist  unless  there  is  an 
infinity  of  useful  men  who  possess  nothing  at  all.  .  .  .* 

Nor  does  he  show  complete  faith  in  any  sort  of  parliament: 

One  distinguishes  between  the  tyranny  of  one  man  and  that  of 
many.  .  .  . 

Under  which  tyranny  would  you  like  to  live?  Under  neither;  but  if 
1  had  to  choose,  I  should  detest  the  tyranny  of  one  man  less  than  that 
of  many.  A  despot  always  has  his  good  moments;  an  assembly  of 
despots  never.^ 

That  Voltaire  was  not  isolated  in  this  preference  is  apparent  from 
the  works  of  Frangois  Quesnay  and  the  Physiocrats,  who  also,  in  the 
main,  wanted  to  see  power  concentrated  in  the  hands  of  a  single 
enlightened  ruler. 

In  England,  George  111  did  not  lack  a  measure  of  support  among 
men  of  intellect.  If  Voltaire  had  perhaps  the  best  brain  in  France, 

•  Ibid.  p.  282. 

'^  Voltaire's  Pliilosophical  Dictionary.  Selected  and  translated  by  H.  I.  Wolfe.  London 
1929. 

'Ibid.  p.  116. 
'  Ibid.  p.  117. 
^  Ibid.  p.  308. 


66  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

Samuel  Johnson  had  clearly  one  of  the  best  brains  in  England. 
While  differing  from  Voltaire  in  nearly  everything  else,  Johnson  had 
as  little  use  for  republics  or  for  democracy. 

'So  far  is  it  from  being  true  that  men  are  naturally  equal,  that  no 
two  people  can  be  half  an  hour  together,  but  one  shall  acquire  an 
evident  superiority  over  the  other'. ^ 

On  another  occasion  he  said: — 

'Sir,  you  are  to  consider,  that  in  our  constitution,  according  to  its 
true  principles,  the  King  is  the  head;  he  is  supreme;  he  is  above  every- 
thing, and  there  is  no  power  by  which  he  can  be  tried'. - 

And  again, 

'The  mode  of  government  by  one  may  be  ill  adapted  to  a  small 
society,  but  is  best  for  a  great  nation'.^ 

And,  finally, 

'.  .  .  a  prince  of  ability  .  .  ,  might  and  should  be  the  directing  soul 
and  spirit  of  his  own  administration.  .  .  .'* 

Living  in  a  country  which  had  been  itself  a  Republic,  and  sur- 
rounded by  friends  professing  a  wide  variety  of  political  opinions, 
Johnson  could  never  be  made  to  see  that  the  world  would  be  much 
improved  by  constitutional  reforms.  Said  Boswell,  on  one  occasion: 

'So,  Sir,  you  laugh  at  schemes  of  political  improvement.' 

And  Johnson  replied: 

'Why,  Sir,  most  schemes  of  political  improvement  are  very 
laughable  things.'^ 

Much  work  remains  to  be  done  on  the  political  theory  of  en- 
lightened monarchy.  Historians  have  been  too  hypnotised  by  the 
approach  of  the  French  Revolution  to  allow  much  importance  to 
authors  who  cannot  be  included  in  the  select  list  of  its  causes.  But 
while  there  is  much  to  do,  we  cannot  expect  further  research  to  reveal 
a  strength  in  enlightened  monarchy  which  it  did  not  and  could  not 
possess.  For  it  is  evident  that  the  king  who  preached  enlightenment 
had  never  a  fraction  of  the  prestige  of  the  king  who  derived  his 
authority  from  God.  More  than  that,  his  authority  derived  more 
from  the  old  doctrine  than  the  new.  His  subjects  still  believed  in 
divine  right  even  when  the  king  himself  was  exchanging  letters  with 

'  BoswelPs  Life  of  Johnson.  Ed.  by  G.  B.  Hill.  Revised  by  L.  F.  Powell.  Six  volumes. 
Oxford,  1934.  Vol.  II.  p.  13. 
"  Ihid.  Vol.  I.  p.  423. 
■'  Ibid.  Vol.  III.  p.  46. 
'  Ihid.  Vol.  II.  p.  117. 
^  Ibid.  Vol.  II.  p.  102. 


MONARCHY     JUSTIFIED     BY     EXPEDIENCE  89 

Voltaire.  Once  this  capital  sum  of  divinity  had  been  expended,  all 
that  was  left  was  the  king's  claim  to  be  more  efficient  than  any 
alternative  form  of  government.  But  this  was  an  insecure  foundation 
for  any  permanent  form  of  monarchy.  The  argument  would  be 
weakened  as  soon  as  a  successful  alternative  appeared.  The  argument 
would  be  demolished  as  soon  as  the  efficient  king  was  succeeded  by  a 
less  efficient  heir.  This  danger  was  apparent  to  Frederick  the  Great 
himself  who  wondered,  shortly  before  his  death,  whether  his  heir 
was  fit  to  succeed  at  all.  Should  his  nephew  prove  soft,  idle,  extrava- 
gant and  uninspiring,  he  foretold  that  neither  Prussia  nor  the  house  of 
Brandenburg  would  last  a  decade.  'I  frame  a  thousand  prayers'  he 
wrote,  'that  my  forecast  may  be  wrong,  that  my  successors  may  do 
their  duty  like  sensible  beings,  and  that  Fortune  may  avert  the  major 
part  of  the  catastrophes  by  which  we  are  threatened'.^  It  is  not  clear 
to  whom  he  was  praying,  but  we  may  be  justly  critical,  in  any  case,  of 
a  system  of  rule  in  which  Fortune  plays  so  large  a  part.  No  system  will 
last  for  ever  and  here  is  one  which  cannot  last  for  long. 


'  Frederick  the  Great,  the  Ruler,  the  Writer,  the  Man.  G.  P.  Gooch.  London,  1947. 
p.  294. 


PART    II 

Oligarchy 


CHAPTER   VII 

Feudalism 


IN  creating  a  nobility,  kings  prepare  the  way  for  their  own  downfall. 
Nor  is  the  process  avoidable.  Their  own  children  and  grand- 
children form  the  basis  of  the  nobility,  their  own  generals  and 
advisers  form  its  successive  accretions,  their  own  conquests  accelerate 
its  growth.  With  a  nobihty  thus  brought  into  existence,  the  king  is 
faced  with  potential  rivals  for  power.  If  he  disperses  them  among 
distant  provinces  they  will  seek  to  gain  independence.  If  he  keeps 
them  at  hand,  they  will  plot  against  him  when  not  actually  quarrelling 
with  each  other.  Inevitably,  the  line  of  kings  will  be  broken  at  some 
point  by  the  succession  of  a  child,  a  saint  or  an  imbecile.  When  that 
moment  comes,  the  nobles  will  try  to  seize  power.  If  they  fail  to 
do  so  collectively,  at  the  centre,  the  result  is  feudalism. 

While  it  would  be  wrong  to  describe  this  process  as  invariable, 
examples  of  it  are  at  least  fairly  common.  China,  for  instance,  became 
a  Feudal  State  towards  the  end  of  the  Chou  Dynasty  (before  500  B.C.) 
and  was  ruled  until  about  250  B.C.  by  hereditary  nobles  with  ranks 
corresponding  to  those  of  Duke,  Marquis,  Count  and  Baron.  These 
in  turn  had  their  own  vassals,  their  own  advisers  and  officials,  their 
own  special  training.  This  was  the  age,  as  it  has  been  called,  of  the 
Warring  States.  Some  shadow  of  the  central  government  remained 
but  its  territory  had  fallen  apart  into  so  many  almost  independent 
fragments.  According  to  one  authority,  these  numbered  at  one  time 
five  or  six  thousand.  A  similar  process  is  evident  in  Japanese  history 
when  a  cultured  and  sophisticated  court  lost  control  of  the  provinces 
and  saw  them  fall  into  the  hands  of  local  gentry,  whose  rivalries  soon 
destroyed  any  semblance  of  unity  or  order.  In  England  the  king  was 
for  nearly  a  century,  from  1399  to  1485,  but  the  chief  among  the 
Dukes  and  Earls,  having  little  more  than  precedence  among  the 
Nevilles  and  Talbots,  the  Beauchamps  and  Stanleys. 

Although  we  could  find  examples  of  Feudalism  in  India,  China 
and  Japan,  Medieval  Europe  affords  the  classic  background  for 
chivalry.  Granted  that  the  priests  of  the  period  have  told  us  their 
case,  using  a  learning  based  on  classic  or  holy  writ,  they  have  not 
distracted  our  attention  entirely  from  the  facts.  The  chief  political 
fact  was  the  armoured  horseman,  the  tank  of  the  period,  on  his  own 
ground  invincible.  The  second  political  fact  was  the  stone-built, 

92 


FEUDALISM  93 

fortified  castle.  It  was  within  a  strategic  framework  of  castles  that  the 
medieval  kings,  bishops  and  knights  played  their  game  of  chess.  And 
they  played  it  according  to  rules  evolved  during  the  Crusades  and 
largely  copied  from  the  other  side.  The  effect  of  the  Crusades  was  to 
bring  European  fighting  men  into  close  contact  with  the  Arab  world 
of  horsemanship.  They  eventually  came  home  with  new  horses  and 
new  ideas.  The  medieval  world  of  Christendom  was  shaped  by 
Oriental  influences,  copied  from  forms  developed  in  Syria,  derived 
from  experience  gained  by  Princes  of  Antioch  and  Counts  of 
Tripolis,  steeped  in  the  legends  of  Ascalon,  Tiberias,  Trebizond  and 
the  Horns  of  Hattin.  The  Christian  knights  had  learnt  their  chivalry 
in  the  desert. 

The  medieval  contributions  to  politics  must  be  disassociated,  surely, 
from  Empire  and  Papacy  and  the  struggle  for  the  prize  that  was  not 
there.  The  political  interest  of  the  Middle  Ages  must  centre  rather  on 
what  is  more  typical:  chivalry,  monasticism,  the  cities  and  the 
universities.  These  are  the  political  equivalent  of  Gothic  architecture. 
They  represent  ideas  that  were  new  then,  unknown  before  and 
weakened  since.  They  also  represent,  at  bottom,  the  same  political 
idea;  the  idea  of  an  organisation  which  is  not  local  (like  a  City  State), 
nor  all-embracing  (like  an  Empire),  but  which  exists  in  different  and 
scattered  places,  comprising  members  who  are  bound  together  by  a 
common  loyalty  and  a  common  training. 

Chivalry,  or  Chevalerie,  derived  from  the  Arabs,  is  the  basic  con- 
ception and  it  means  essentially  a  code  of  conduct  among  horsemen. 
The  medieval  armoured  cavalryman  was  a  man-and-horse,  both 
carefully  and  expensively  bred,  trained  and  equipped.  Descent 
mattered,  both  in  the  horse  and  in  the  man.  Each  needed  a  pedigree. 
Training  mattered,  too,  and  that  of  the  knight  covered  his  upbringing 
from  the  age  of  seven  to  the  age  of  twenty-one;  a  training  in  how  to 
ride,  jump,  wrestle,  swim,  hunt,  hawk,  joust  and  endure  fatigue.  But 
the  knight's  effectiveness  in  battle  depended  not  only  upon  himself 
but  upon  a  team  of  assistants — squire,  page,  grooms,  armourer, 
spare  horses  and  packhorses.  There  were  five  or  six  non-combatants 
for  every  man  who  fought.  But  the  knight  could  not  operate  under 
certain  conditions — in  mountains,  woods,  marsh,  night  or  fog.  He 
was,  like  a  modern  tank,  rather  blind  and  rather  dependent  on 
auxiliaries.  He  needed  time  to  arm  and  so  could  be  surprised  in  camp 
unless  guarded  by  infantry.  Although  relatively  invulnerable  in  battle, 
he  might  quite  easily  find  himself  taken  prisoner.  He  was  too  highly 
trained  to  know  any  occupations  other  than  fighting,  hunting  and 
acting  as  judge.  And  even  the  hunting  was  not  purely  for  sport.  As 
Machiavelli  pointed  out: 

He  must  follow  the  chase,  by  which  he  accustoms  his  body  to  hardship, 


94  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

and  learns  something  of  the  nature  of  localities,  and  gets  to  find  out 
how  the  mountains  rise,  how  the  valleys  open  out,  how  the  plains 
lie,  and  to  understand  the  nature  of  rivers  and  marshes,  and  in  all  this 
to  take  the  greatest  care.^ 

The  art  was,  in  fact,  to  learn  from  hunting  what  the  modern  soldier 
learns  from  the  map.  A  final  characteristic  of  the  knight  lay  in  his 
attitude  towards  women.  Removed  from  his  mother  and  sisters  at  the 
age  of  seven,  he  was  brought  up  in  another  household  and  there 
taught  to  attend  the  ladies  with  respect.  His  actual  education  was 
purely  among  men  and  his  later  way  of  life  took  him  away  from  his 
womenfolk  for  considerable  periods.  He  tended,  perhaps  for  this 
reason,  to  idealise  them;  although  not  necessarily  the  one  he  had 
married.  During  his  absence,  on  a  Crusade,  for  example,  his  family 
might  be  almost  unprotected. 

From  these  and  other  factors,  some  of  them  religious,  a  pattern  of 
conduct  emerges.  To  begin  with,  all  knights  in  Christendom,  (what- 
ever their  quarrels  with  each  other)  were  agreed  on  the  necessity  of 
maintaining  their  own  order  and  making  the  peasants  supply  them 
and  their  servants  with  food  and  drink.  In  warfare  among  themselves 
they  killed  individuals  but  rarely  slaughtered  families  of  noble  birth. 
They  spared  women,  clergy  and  children  by  mutual  agreement, 
partly  to  protect  their  own  and  avoid  retaliation.  They  usually 
spared  each  other's  squires,  pages  and  grooms,  as  non-combatants. 
And  the  idea  of  sparing  the  unarmed  leads  at  once  to  the  indignation 
felt  on  finding  others  less  scrupulous.  This  leads  in  turn  to  the  idea  of 
protecting  the  weak ;  an  idea  implicit  in  the  vows  of  knighthood.  They 
usually  fought,  almost  by  agreement,  on  a  chosen  field  and  in  day- 
light, without  attempting  any  ruse,  stratagem  or  surprise.  They  were 
quite  used  to  being  taken  prisoner  (which  was  not  disgraceful)  and 
treated  their  prisoners — if  of  equal  rank — with  just  such  consideration 
as  they  hoped  to  receive.  They  had,  in  fact,  a  code  of  etiquette.  It  still 
lingers,  contrasting  with  the  ideas  of  the  Japanese,  for  example, 
whose  etiquette  is  different.  They  had  a  science  of  heraldry,  partly  to 
identify  friend  and  foe,  superior  and  junior,  on  the  battlefield;  and 
partly  to  trace  descent.  They  had  heralds,  who  could  safely  approach 
the  enemy.  They  abided,  in  general,  by  the  rules  of  war. 

What  are  the  political  implications  of  chivalry?  It  involves,  first  of 
all,  the  idea  of  a  politically  privileged  class,  enjoying  a  particular 
power  and  prestige  but  earning  it  by  such  a  training  as  many  might 
fear  to  undergo  and  by  such  a  continued  and  arduous  service  as 
others  might  well  prefer  to  avoid.  In  assessing  the  knight's  special 
prestige,  inherited  directly  from  nomadic  traditions,  we  must 
distinguish  sharply  between  respect  and  envy.  We  feel  envy,  perhaps, 

'  The  Prince.  Trans,  by  W.  K.  Marriott.  Everyman  Edition.  London,  1906. 


FEUDALISM  95 

for  those  who  are  wealthy  and  surrounded  by  luxury  but  reserve  our 
respect  for  those  whose  achievements  are  beyond  us.  The  respect  we 
may  feel  for  the  climbers  who  conquered  Everest  is  not  unconnected 
with  the  dismay  we  should  most  of  us  have  felt  if  suddenly  offered  a 
place  in  the  team.  The  knight's  code  of  honour  contained  no  promise 
of  comfort  but  involved  him  in  some  risk  of  death.  Of  those  who 
stood  aside  when  he  passed,  many  would  have  firmly  refused  to 
change  places  with  him. 

Chivalry  next  implies  an  idea  of  equality  as  between  adult  and 
trained  members  of  a  particular  order  or  society;  a  group  as  wide  as 
Christendom  with  a  sort  of  language  of  its  own.  it  was  and  is  a  pecu- 
liar sort  of  equality,  allowing  of  all  the  ranks  of  office  like  Constable 
and  Marshal,  allowing  of  all  the  grades  of  nobility  from  Duke, 
Marquis,  Count  and  Baron  down  to  plain  Knight  or  Esquire,  and 
yet  ensuring,  for  certain  purposes,  that  all  are  on  one  footing  as 
gentlemen.  The  idea  survives  to  this  day  in  an  Officers'  Mess.  It 
survived  until  recently  in  the  duel,  a  custom  which  used  to  expose  all 
gentlemen  in  an  equal  degree  to  a  certain  kind  of  risk.  In  Japan  during 
its  feudal  period  the  Samurai — distinguished  from  other  folk,  as 
were  European  gentlemen,  by  the  wearing  of  the  sword — had  some- 
thing of  the  same  equality,  but  not  merely  in  fighting.  They  also 
shared  in  common  the  obligation  to  commit  suicide  rather  than 
suffer  dishonour.  As  no  similar  obligation  lay  on  humbler  people, 
this  is  a  parallel  instance  of  an  equality  not  of  comfort  but  of  danger. 

Chivalry  implies,  lastly,  a  kind  of  sportsmanship  which  makes  it 
possible  to  reconcile  conflict  (nowadays  verbal  conflict,  as  for  example 
in  Parliament)  with  courtesy,  and  even  friendship,  between  oppo- 
nents; a  necessary  aspect  of  political  debate.  The  medieval  knight 
going  to  the  aid  of  a  wounded  opponent  was  not  only  perpetuating 
an  old  Arab  custom  but  also  furnishing  the  precedent  according  to 
which  an  officer  to-day  may  salute  a  prisoner  of  war  who  is  senior  to 
him  in  rank.  It  is  the  tradition  of  a  warfare  confined  by  general 
consent  to  certain  people,  certain  places  and  even  to  certain  times  of 
year.  It  was  the  better  aspect  of  Feudalism  that  its  tendency  was  to 
keep  warfare  within  bounds.  The  removal  of  these  restrictions  has 
brought  with  it  no  very  obvious  advantage. 

Chivalry  was  one  aspect  of  Feudalism:  Monasticism  was  another. 
And  indeed  knighthood  and  monasticism  have  something  in  common 
and  actually  overlapped  in  the  military  orders.  But  the  Orders  of 
Knighthood  were  not  as  strict  as  the  Rule  of  St.  Benedict,  which  was 
contemporary  with  the  work  of  Justinian,  based  upon  civil  and  canon 
law,  and  upheld  to  this  day  as  a  monument  of  common  sense;  the 
common  sense  expressed  in  the  feeling  that  men  who  live  without 
women  must  not  live  without  rules.  The  Rule  of  St.  Benedict  sets  a 


96  THE     FVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

Standard  of  monastic  conduct,  not  too  hard  to  be  enforced  nor  'too 
easy-going  to  be  a  means  of  perfection',^  and  provided  for  the  monk 
the  same  sort  of  training  and  test  that  knighthood  did  for  the  soldier. 
The  Abbot  or  Prior,  the  Abbess  or  Prioress,  the  Monk  or  Nun  had 
gained  a  certain  place  in  the  Feudal  structure,  a  certain  authority  or 
privilege  in  the  world,  partly  by  birth  and  partly  by  education  but  at 
a  price  which  was  known  to  everybody.  They  were  to  be  respected 
rather  than  envied.  And  the  world  was  thus  provided  with  a  set  of 
administrators,  scholars  and  clerks  who  were  unlikely  to  have  per- 
sonal ambitions  of  a  certain  kind,  whose  integrity  was  in  some 
measure  established,  and  in  whose  relationship  with  each  other  there 
was  an  element  of  equality  as  between  members  of  an  exclusive 
society. 

Politically,  the  monastic  heritage  is  extremely  important.  The  Rule 
of  St.  Benedict  and  its  later  variants  provided  the  models  for  a 
written  constitution.  The  procedure  in  Chapter  provided  a  model 
for  the  orderly  conduct  of  business.  The  system  of  Visitation  gave 
precedent  for  any  regular  system  of  inspection.  And,  finally,  the 
sending  of  delegates  to  the  annual  Conferences  or  Chapters  of  the 
Order  (more  especially  the  Dominican)  was  a  thirteenth  century 
experiment  in  representative  democracy.'^  There  is  something  more 
than  symbolism  in  the  fact  that  the  English  Parliament  meets  and 
has  always  met  in  what  used  to  be  monastic  precincts.  It  must, 
however,  be  remembered  that  the  monks  of  Christendom  professed 
an  Oriental  religion  and  had  still  earlier  models  of  monasticism  in 
the  East;  models  older  than  Christianity  itself.  Although  the  Buddhist 
monastery  had  no  higher  organisation  than  the  single  (and  often 
large)  community,  its  internal  organisation  was  highly  developed 
pohtically  as  well  as  culturally.  Control  lay  in  a  full  meeting  of  the 
members,  provided  there  was  a  quorum  and  provided  that  the 
decisions  made  were  not  opposed  to  Buddhist  scripture.^  Something 
of  this  practice  may  well  have  passed  from  Buddhist  to  Christian 
monasteries. 

Like  monasteries,  medieval  cities  also  had  their  place  in  the  feudal 
system;  and  these  offered  a  governmental  pattern  of  their  own.  The 
Ancient  World  had  known  both  City  States  and  Empires  in  which 
City  States  were  included.  The  City  State  was  both  a  City  and  the 
territory  about  it  and  such  States  were  known  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
Venice,  for  example,  being  one.  There  were  City  States  ruled  by  a 
Bishop,  like  Durham,  the  diocese  and  territory  being  one.  But  there 
were  also,  in  the  Middle  Ages,  many  rulers  who  lived  in  their  castles 
or  moved  round  their  estates,  leaving  cities  to  govern  themselves. 

*  Saint  Benedict  and  the  Sixth  Century.  Dom  John  Chapman.  London,  1929.  p.  203. 

*  A  History  of  Political  Thcorv.  G.  H.  Sabine.  London,  1952.  p.  268. 

'  See  Theory  oj  Government  in  Ancient  India.  B.  Prasad.  Allahabad,  1927.  pp.  321-330. 


FEUDALISM  97 

Many  cities  thus  owed  allegiance  to  a  distant  King  or  Emperor,  but 
to  no  one  else,  and  yet  had  no  territory  outside  their  quite  limited 
boundaries.  They  were  self-governing  in  a  new  way  and  gave  a  new 
meaning  to  the  word  'citizen'.  For  the  Athenian  or  Roman  voter  was 
originally  a  farmer,  seen  in  the  city  only  on  market  days.  But  the 
citizen  of  Paris,  Augsburg  or  London  was  almost  certainly  a  crafts- 
man or  merchant  and  quite  probably  nothing  else.^  Walled  Cities 
were  packed  tight  with  people  and  were  too  small — as  a  result  of 
economies  in  length  of  fortification — to  develop  much  district  feeling 
within  the  walls.  Their  corporate  loyalty  was  strong  but  the  citizens 
developed  secondary  loyalties  to  their  Craft,  Mystery  or  Guild. 
Within  each  Guild,  membership  was  graded,  with  apprentices, 
journeymen,  masters,  aldermen  and  presiding  Master.  And  the  actual 
government  of  the  City  was  apt  to  be  entrusted,  in  practice,  to  the 
heads  of  Guilds  in  rotation.  But  these  Guilds  were  not  purely  local. 
Membership  of  a  Mystery  in  one  City  carried  with  it  at  least  an 
honorary  membership  of  the  equivalent  Mystery  in  the  cities  adjacent 
or  most  nearly  connected  by  trade.  Guild  membership  was  a  super- 
national  organisation,  in  fact,  very  much  like  Monasticism  or 
Chivalry. 

To  complete  the  picture,  there  were  the  Universities.  These  offered 
the  same  sort  of  privileged  position,  to  be  gained  by  much  the  same 
laborious  means.  The  scholar  served  the  same  sort  of  apprenticeship 
as  the  Squire  or  Draper.  He  spent  five  or  six  years  in  mastering  his 
basic  subjects — grammar,  rhetoric  and  logic;  arithmetic,  geometry, 
music  and  astronomy — before  graduating  in  Arts.  Only  then  could  he 
enter  one  of  the  higher  Faculties  of  Theology,  Law  or  Medicine.  In 
Theology  a  further  six  years  might  be  spent  in  becoming  Bachelor  of 
Divinity,  and  twelve  or  thirteen  years  altogether  in  achieving  the 
Doctorate.  Once  earned,  the  doctorate  gave  the  right  to  lecture  at 
any  university  in  Christendom,  not  merely  at  the  University  in  which 
the  degree  was  obtained.  Similarly,  a  Doctor  of  the  Civil  Law  had  a 
high  social  status  and  was  eligible  for  public  office.  Full  membership 
of  a  higher  Faculty  carried  its  privileges,  in  fact,  but  they  had  to  be 
earned  before  they  could  be  enjoyed.  In  university  life,  again,  there 
was  a  measure  of  equality.  It  was,  however,  equality  among  people 
similarly  qualified  who  had  gained  a  certain  position  by  years  of 
eff"ort.  The  typical  medieval  institutions  are  all  thus  characterised.  In 
all  there  are  the  same  elements:  membership  of  an  international 
society;  apprenticeship;  the  passing  of  a  test;  an  oath  of  loyalty;  the 
recognition  of  a  code  of  professional  conduct;  and  the  award  of  a 
definite  place  in  a  respected  hierarchy. 

Although  the  merits  of  European  Feudalism  are  worthy  of  note, 

'  See  Cambridge  Medieval  History.  Vol.  VI.  pp.  473-503. 


98  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

they  do  not  characterise  feudalism  wherever  it  appears.  Elsewhere 
and  in  general,  the  merits  of  feudalism  are  less  tangible.  The  obvious 
advantage  of  multiplying  centres  of  semi-independent  rule  is  that  the 
arts  flourish  in  proportion  to  the  potential  number  of  patrons. 
Whether  we  are  to  count  the  Buddhist  temples  in  Japan,  the  palaces 
in  Italy  or  the  Court  Orchestras  in  eighteenth  century  Germany,  we 
are  bound  to  recognise  that  the  fragmentation  of  an  Empire  gives 
great  scope  to  the  artist.  And  Confucius  learnt  more  at  different 
courts  than  he  would  ever  have  learnt  at  one.  As  against  that, 
feudalism  brings  endless  if  petty  warfare  which,  harmless  as  it  may  be 
when  compared  with  conflict  on  the  national  scale,  creates  a  demand 
for  the  restoration  of  order.  Monarchy  is  hailed  with  relief  by  those 
who  have  lived  for  long  under  a  militant  feudalism. 

If  we  seek  for  a  literature  intended  to  justify  feudalism  as  against 
the  arguments  for  a  centralised  efficiency,  we  shall  find  it  less  in 
political  treatises  than  in  ballads,  legends,  chronicles  and  songs.  The 
praise  of  feudalism  is  implicit  in  the  Song  of  Roland,  the  Japanese 
legend  of  the  Forty  Ronin,  the  Border  Ballads  and  the  Chronicles  of 
Froissart.  To  reasonings  about  improved  administration  the  Feud- 
alists reply  most  effectively  by  trumpet  calls,  fluttering  banners,  the 
names  of  heroes  and  a  rousing  chorus.  These  arguments  are  un- 
answerable. It  would  be  wrong,  however,  to  conclude  that  there  were 
no  arguments  of  a  different  kind.  The  Barons  who  drew  up  the 
clauses  of  Magna  Carta  had  a  point  of  view.  That  they  expressed  it  in 
legal  rather  than  philosophic  terms  is  itself  significant,  for  they 
clearly  regarded  their  relationship  to  the  king  as  one  to  be  defined  by 
law.  In  a  later  age,  theorists  were  to  speak  of  a  social  contract,  real 
or  implied,  between  ruler  and  people.  The  Barons  at  Runnymede,  at 
once  more  powerful  and  more  practical,  drew  up  an  actual  contract 
and  made  the  king  seal  it.  As  a  modern  historian  has  emphasised: 

The  rule  of  law  was  the  most  clearly  realized  political  principle  of 
the  feudal  age,  governing  the  conduct  of  lord  and  vassal  alike.  .  .  .^ 

It  follows  that  the  political  theories  of  feudalism  are  mostly  in 
legal  form.  Many,  moreover,  date  from  a  period  before  any  very 
articulate  peerage  had  emerged.  It  was  only  at  a  later  date,  when 
national  monarchies  were  already  being  established,  that  feudal 
theories  were  occasionally  invoked  by  those  opposed  to  royal 
absolutism.  It  is  only  in  the  sixteenth  century  and  from  rather  isolated 
sources  that  we  learn  what  the  case  for  feudalism  had  been.  It  appears, 
for  example,  in  a  Defence  oj  Liberty  against  Tyrants-  written  in  1579, 

'  Ttie  Constitutional  History  of  Medieval  England.  J.  E.  A.  JoilifTe.  London,  1937. 
p.  157. 

-  A  Defence  of  Liberty  against  Tyrants.  Ed.,  with  introduction,  by  H.  J.  Laski  from 
the  English  edition  of  1689.  London,  1924. 


FEU  DA  I, ISM  99 

probably  by  Duplcssis-Mornay,  adviser  to  Henry  of  Navarre. 
What  does  the  case  for  fcudahsm  amount  to?  It  is  based  on  the 
need  to  restrain  royal  power  by  law  and  contract.  Nobles  were  of  a 
privileged  class,  having  gained  their  special  rights  by  birth  and 
training.  Other  classes — the  bishops  and  clergy,  abbots  and  monks, 
university  doctors  and  masters,  master-craftsmen  and  burgesses — also 
had  special  privileges  which  were  secured  by  law  and  custom,  parch- 
ment and  seal.  As  these  privileges  had  been  earned  and  usually  paid 
for,  it  was  of  the  essence  of  the  bargain  that  the  law  should  be  binding 
on  the  king  as  well  as  on  the  subject.  The  law  was  therefore  of 
higher  authority  than  the  king;  and  the  law  had  to  be  enforced.  By 
whom?  Not  by  any  individual  noble  but  by  any  large  group  of  nobles 
who  conceived  that  their  'liberties'  had  been  infringed.  And  their 
liberties  included  the  powers  they  enjoyed  over  other  people — even 
royal  powers  as  exercised,  within  their  lordships,  by  the  lords  of  the 
Welsh  Marches.  As  against  a  royal  tyranny,  exceeding  the  bounds  of 
law,  the  greater  lords  could  oppose  a  military  power  greater  than  the 
king's.  If  primarily  guarding  their  own  interests,  it  could  be  shown 
that  they  were  incidentally  guarding  the  interests  of  others.  They  did 
so,  moreover,  by  virtue  of  the  very  feudal  obligations  by  which  they 
were  themselves  bound.  Vassalage  was  a  contract  binding  on  both 
parties  and  not  merely  on  the  vassal.  And  the  king,  besides,  was 
vassal  to  God. 

Briefly,  even  as  those  rebellious  vassals  who  endeavour  to  possess 
themselves  of  the  kingdom,  do  commit  felony  by  the  testimony  of  all 
laws,  and  deserve  to  be  extirpated  .  .  .  now  for  that  we  see  that  God 
invests  kings  into  their  kingdoms,  almost  in  the  same  manner  that 
vassals  are  invested  into  their  fees  by  their  sovereign,  we  must  needs 
conclude  that  kings  are  the  vassals  of  God,  and  deserve  to  be  deprived 
of  the  benefit  they  receive  from  their  lord  if  they  commit  felony  ...  if 
God  hold  the  place  of  sovereign  Lord,  and  the  king  as  vassal,  who  dare 
deny  but  that  we  must  rather  obey  the  sovereign  than  the  vassal?^ 

Here  is  a  useful  doctrine  for  a  restive  nobility.  But  the  author  goes 
further  and  remarks  that  the  King  of  France  makes  his  coronation 
oath  before  twelve  peers  who  represent  the  people  as  a  whole,  'which 
shows  that  these  twelve  peers  are  above  the  king'.'-^  This  is  not  an 
argument  that  would  have  appealed,  at  first  sight,  to  Louis  XIV.  But 
the  author  of  A  Defence  of  Liberty  is  on  firm  ground  in  preferring  an 
actual  coronation  oath  to  an  imaginary  social  contract.  He  goes  on 
to  explain  that  an  oath  of  this  kind  is  almost  universal. 

For  neither  the  emperor,  the  king  of  France,  nor  the  kings  of  Spain, 
England,  Polander,  Hungary,  and  all  the  other  lawful  princes;  as  the 

'  A  Defence  of  Liberty,  op.  cit.  p.  79. 
'/hid.  p.  131. 


100  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

archdukes  of  Austria,  dukes  of  Brabante,  earls  of  Flanders,  and 
Holland,  nor  other  princes,  are  not  admitted  to  the  government  of 
their  estates,  before  they  have  promised  to  the  electors,  peers,  palatines, 
lords,  barons,  and  governors,  that  they  will  render  to  every  one  right 
according  to  the  laws  of  the  country,  yea,  so  strictly  that  they  cannot 
alter  or  innovate  anything  contrary  to  the  privileges  of  the  countries, 
without  the  consent  of  the  towns  and  provinces;  if  they  do  it,  they  are 
no  less  guilty  of  rebellion  against  the  laws  than  the  people  are  in  their 
kind,  if  they  refuse  obedience  when  they  command  according  to  law.^ 

The  author  later  draws  a  sharp  contrast  between  a  lawful  king  and 
a  mere  tyrant.  The  former  is  distinguished  by  his  willingness  to  share 
power  with  his  relatives  and  peers. 

The  tyrant  advances  above  and  in  opposition  to  the  ancient  and 
worthy  nobility,  mean  and  unworthy  persons;  to  the  end  that  these 
base  fellows,  being  absolutely  his  creatures,  might  applaud  and  apply 
themselves  to  the  fulfilling  of  all  his  loose  and  unruly  desires.  The  king 
maintains  every  man  in  his  rank,  honours  and  respects  the  grandees 
as  the  kingdom's  friends,  desiring  their  good  as  well  as  his  own.- 

The  advocate  of  Feudalism  can  thus  show  that  a  nobility  is  needed 
to  keep  the  king  in  check  and  that  only  a  tyrant  will  use  any  but  his 
hereditary  advisers.  He  could  also  have  shown  (had  the  point  inter- 
ested him)  that  the  noble  who  resists  illegal  demands — conveyed 
perhaps  by  'mean  and  unworthy  persons' — is  the  indirect  means  of 
saving  others  from  oppression.  Perhaps  the  most  eloquent  defence  of 
feudalism  ever  uttered  came  from  Edmund  Burke  as  he  saw  its  last 
remnants  destroyed  in  France.  He  laments  the  plight  of  Marie 
Antoinette  in  a  famous  passage  which  concludes: — 

.  .  .  little  did  I  dream  that  I  should  have  lived  to  see  such  disasters 
fallen  upon  her  in  a  nation  of  gallant  men,  in  a  nation  of  men  of 
honour,  and  of  cavaliers.  I  thought  ten  thousand  swords  must  have 
leaped  from  their  scabbards  to  avenge  even  a  look  that  threatened  her 
with  insult.  But  the  age  of  chivalry  is  gone.  That  of  sophisters,  econo- 
mists, and  calculators,  has  succeeded;  and  the  glory  of  Europe  is 
extinguished  for  ever.  Never,  never  more  shall  we  behold  that  generous 
loyalty  to  rank  and  sex,  that  proud  submission,  that  dignified  obedi- 
ence, that  subordination  of  the  heart,  which  kept  alive,  even  in  servitude 
itself,  the  spirit  of  an  exalted  freedom.  The  unbought  grace  of  life,  the 
cheap  defence  of  nations,  the  nurse  of  manly  sentiment  and  heroic 
enterprise,  is  gone!  It  is  gone,  that  sensibility  of  principle,  that 
chastity  of  honour,  which  felt  a  stain  like  a  wound,  which  inspired 
courage  whilst  it  mitigated  ferocity,  which  ennobled  whatever  it 
touched,  and  under  which  vice  itself  lost  half  its  evil,  by  losing  all  its 
grossness.^ 

'Ibid.  p.  149. 

^  A  Defence  of  Liberty,  op.  cit.  p.  185. 

*  Refleclions  on  the  Revolution  in  France.  Edmund  Burke.  Everyman,  1935.  p.  73. 


FEUDALISM  101 

That  there  was  a  case  for  Feudalism  in  its  strict  sense,  and  for  the 
other  institutions  connected  with  it — chivalry,  monasticism,  cities 
and  universities — is  sufficiently  clear.  That  there  was  a  case  against  it 
is  clearer  still.  For  Feudalism,  at  its  worst,  could  destroy  the  King- 
dom. It  could  do  so  especially  through  the  rebellious  lord  seeking 
help  from  beyond  the  nearest  frontier.  It  could  do  so  in  a  different  way 
if  feudal  lords  tried  to  replace  the  king  by  a  committee  of  themselves, 
lacking  as  they  would  any  real  trust  in  each  other.  It  could  do  so, 
finally,  in  the  event  of  a  disputed  succession  with  diff"erent  parties 
supporting  different  candidates  for  the  throne.  Considered  in  isola- 
tion, feudalism  was  more  dangerous  than  useful.  It  must,  however, 
be  remembered  that  European  aristocracy,  a  more  hopeful  form  of 
government,  was  rooted  in  feudal  traditions.  The  aristocrats  who 
sought  and  obtained  control  of  the  central  government  had  still  a 
measure  of  feudal  interest  in  the  provinces.  More  than  that,  they 
inherited  from  the  feudal  lord  that  determination  to  protect  the  rights 
of  the  individual  as  against  the  State.  The  individual  was  always 
essentially  the  feudal  lord  himself  but  the  freedom  he  sought  for  his 
own  family  was  extended  gradually  to  other  families  as  well.  The 
defence  of  liberties  merged  imperceptibly  into  the  struggle  for 
freedom. 


CHAPTER   VIII 

Aristocracy 


ARISTOCRACY,  the  rule  of  the  respected  few,  is  normally  the 
^  sequel  to  monarchy.  It  is  easier  for  an  aristocracy  to  establish 
its  power  within  a  state  already  formed,  inside  boundaries  already 
defined  and  through  institutions  already  in  existence.  Nor  is  it 
necessary  for  the  monarchy  to  disappear.  The  Egyptian  monarchy, 
the  earliest  of  which  the  history  is  known,  was  largely  overshadowed 
by  the  nobility  during  the  fifth  dynasty  (2750-2250  B.C.)  and  still 
more  during  the  sixth,  but  the  monarchy,  in  form,  remained.  The 
same  was  roughly  true  of  China  under  the  Han  Dynasty.  At  Sparta, 
a  predominantly  aristocratic  state,  the  dual  kingship  survived  and 
with  a  share  of  influence.  At  Athens  the  monarchy  gave  place  quietly 
to  aristocracy  during  the  eighth  century.  At  Rome,  by  contrast,  the 
kings  were  dethroned,  about  509  B.C.,  by  the  nobles,  and  the  kingship 
lingered  on  only  in  the  form  of  the  Rex  Sacrorum,  a  sacrificial  oflRce 
of  minor  importance.  Rome  provides  perhaps  the  best  early  example 
of  aristocracy  in  its  republican  form. 

Rome  is  first  known  to  us  as  a  City  State  of  an  almost  Greek 
pattern  but  with  a  marked  geographical  difference.  Rome  is  placed 
neither  in  a  mountain  valley  nor  on  an  island.  It  is  not  even  on  the 
coast. ^  It  lies  halfway  up  the  Italian  peninsula,  at  the  lowest  point  at 
which  the  Tiber  could  be  bridged,  and  in  the  middle  of  a  not  very 
defensible  plain.  This  plain,  in  turn,  forms  a  part  of  a  geographical 
area  sharply  defined  by  the  Alps  and  the  sea.  The  Romans  had  a 
strong  motive  to  enlarge  their  territory  to  its  natural  limits  and  they 
quite  soon  controlled  an  area  larger  than,  say,  Attica.  They  were 
neither  traders  nor  seamen-  and  so  extended  their  territory  not  by 
colonisation  but  by  adding  one  adjacent  area  to  another.  In  294  B.C. 
the  male  citizens  of  military  age  numbered  262,321.  By  169  B.C.  they 
numbered  312,885.  By  the  middle  of  the  third  century  there  must  have 
been  a  million  people  other  than  aliens  and  slaves.  Politically,  their 
problem  resembled  neither  that  of  the  Athenians  nor  that  of  the 
Hindoos.  Rome  was  a  monarchy  when  its  territorial  expansion  began 

'  Geographic  Background  of  Greek  and  Roman  History.  M.  Cary.  Oxford,  1949. 
pp.  130-133. 

-  See  An  Economic  History  of  Rome.  T.  Frank.  London,  1927.  p.  118. 

102 


ARISTOCRACY  103 

but  with  a  nobility  comprising  the  leaders  or  elders  of  the  original 
tribes  of  Latium.  These  were  the  Patricians,  members  of  'gentes'  or 
known  families,  alone  able  at  first  to  bear  office.  Beneath  them,  a 
wider  class  of  Equites  included  those  able  to  provide  themselves  with 
a  horse  for  service  in  war.  The  respective  words,  the  one  suggesting 
fatherhood  and  the  other  the  cavalryman's  prestige,  are  significant. 
It  was  the  Patricians  who  rid  themselves  of  the  Monarchy  and  divided 
the  royal  power  between  two  officers,  the  Consuls,  each  elected  for 
one  year. 

The  problem,  for  an  aristocracy,  is  one  of  preventing  (on  the  one 
hand)  a  revival  of  kingship  and  (on  the  other)  a  revolt  of  the  people. 
The  two  Consuls  represented  a  Patrician  device  to  serve  the  former 
purpose.  Each  had  civil,  military  and  judicial  powers,  but  the  one 
was  a  check  on  the  other  and  their  period  of  office  was  short.  The 
Republic  lasted,  in  fact,  for  about  250  years,  guarded  by  a  complex 
but  unwritten  constitution,  it  would  hardly  have  lasted  so  long  if  the 
Patricians  had  not  yielded  to  the. pressure  of  wealthy  men  of  Plebeian 
birth.  They  yielded  to  a  growing  pressure  between  471  and  367  B.C., 
finally  allowing  one  of  the  two  Consuls  to  be  a  Plebeian.  The  poorer 
Plebs  played  a  part  in  the  struggle  and  gained  some  elective  functions. 
The  wealthier  Plebs  were  virtually  admitted  to  an  aristocracy  which 
they  considerably  strengthened.  Rome  acquired,  as  a  result,  a  mixed 
constitution,  predominantly  aristocratic  but  with  elements  of 
democracy  and  monarchy.  • 

This  constitution  was  never  planned  as  a  whole,  it  embodied  the 
political  gains  of  various  groups  and  so  represented  a  balance  of 
forces.  Such  a  balance  can  be  maintained  in  two  ways;  either  by  the 
continued  pull  of  the  same  forces,  each  as  weighty  as  at  first,  or  else 
by  a  legal  stabilisation  of  the  positions  gained,  it  was  by  law,  written 
or  unwritten,  that  the  position  was  stabilised;  and  law,  in  Rome, 
became  extremely  important.  The  leading  Romans  were  mostly  to 
combine  in  themselves  the  character  of  lawyer  and  soldier — the  two 
professions  which  most  promote  a  sense  of  reality.  Starting  with  a 
complex  political  structure,  they  hammered  out  something  workable 
and  did  this  without  resorting  to  any  theorist.  Cato  claimed,  accord- 
ing to  Cicero,  that  the  Roman  Republic  was  not  framed  by  any  one 
genius  but  by  the  work  of  generations.  This  was  true  and  it  was  the 
cause  of  the  multiplicity  of  public  offices  and  assemblies  which  seems, 
in  retrospect,  so  confusing.  Besides  the  two  Consuls  were  six  Consular 
Tribunes,  a  number  of  Praetors  (eventually,  sixteen),  two  Censors, 
five  (and  ultimately  ten)  Tribunes,  four  Aediles,  four  (and  finally 
forty)  Quaestors,  twenty-six  police  magistrates  (the  XXVI  viri)  and  a 
number    of    Military   Tribunes.    All    above    the    rank    of   Military 

'  Roman  Political  Insliiutions.  L .  P.  Homo.  London,  1929. 


104  THH     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

Tribune  had  a  mixture  of  administrative,  legal,  financial  and  judicial 
duties.  All  without  exception  were  elected  for  a  limited  term  of  office. 

Election  is  quite  compatible  with  aristocracy  provided  that  the 
same  people,  or  the  same  sort  of  people,  are  always  chosen.  This  was 
ensured  in  Rome  by  two  devices;  the  'cursus  honorum'  and  the 
distribution  of  votes.  The  'cursus  honorum'  was  the  accepted  rule  by 
which  no  one  was  eligible  for  election  to  a  higher  office  until  he  had 
served  in  a  lower.  The  man  with  political  ambitions  had  to  enter,  at 
about  the  age  of  eighteen,  a  series  of  alternating  military  and  civil 
offices  which  might  lead  him  to  election,  finally,  as  Consul.  The 
periods  of  office  and  periods  of  ineligibility  were  such  as  to  prevent 
anyone  becoming  Consul  before  the  age  of  43.  As  a  political  career 
thus  admitted  of  no  other  activity,  and  as  the  offices  were  mostly 
unpaid,  the  'cursus  honorum'  was  open  only  to  those  already  wealthy 
at  the  age  of  eighteen  and  with  an  assured  income  for  life. 

The  distribution  of  votes  was  most  carefully  planned  in  the 
Comitia  Centuriata,  to  which  all  Roman  citizens  belonged.  This  mass 
meeting  voted  by  Centuries,  the  citizens  being  organised  on  military 
lines,  and  each  century  recorded  one  vote,  that  of  its  own  majority. 
This  might  have  been  a  democratic  system  had  the  Centuries  each 
numbered  one  hundred  voters.  In  fact,  however,  while  each  Eques- 
trian Century  numbered  one  hundred  (and  there  were  eighteen  of 
these)  the  other  Centuries,  graded  on  a  property  qualification,  varied 
in  strength  from  142-200  in  the  Pedites  of  the  First  Class  and  320  in 
Classes  2  to  5,  down  to  130,000  in  the  Proletarian  Century.  The 
Centuries  numbered  193  in  all,  so  that  the  Equites  and  the  Pedites 
1st  Class  had  by  themselves,  if  they  agreed,  a  bare  majority  of  98 
votes.  If  there  was  disagreement  the  twenty  Centuries  of  the  2nd 
Class  voted  until  97  votes  had  been  recorded.  Then  the  voting  stopped 
and  the  result  was  announced.  The  third,  fourth,  fifth  and  unclassified 
Centuries  rarely  had  occasion  to  vote  at  all.  Within  each  Century 
voting  was  secret,  voters  collecting  in  an  enclosure  and  each  recording 
his  vote  as  he  left  by  ballots  marked  U.R.  (uti  rogas)  or  A  (antiquo), 
by  writing  the  name  of  the  candidate  on  a  'tabella',  or  (on  cases  of 
criminal  appeal)  by  ballots  marked  L  (libero)  and  D  (damno).  The 
functions  of  this  important  assembly  included  the  declaring  of  war, 
the  passing  of  legal  enactments  on  the  recommendation  of  Senate, 
and  the  election  of  Consuls,  Censors  and  Praetors. 

More  democratic  was  the  Concilium  Plebis,  which  comprised  in 
theory  250,000  or  300,000  voters  and  met  on  market  days.  No  con- 
siderable proportion  of  them  could  in  fact  be  collected.  Had  it  been 
possible,  moreover,  the  difficulty  would  have  been  to  explain  to  them 
the  point  at  issue.  Tribunes  and  Plebeian  Aediles  were  elected  by  this 
Assembly,  which  may  sometimes  have  tested  the  relative  popularity 


ARISTOCRACY  105 

of  the  candidates — or  their  popularity,  at  any  rate,  among  a  chance 
collection  of  the  unemployed.  In  practice,  however,  those  eligible  to 
stand  for  election  had  to  have  served  previously  as  Legatus  Legionis 
(or  some  other  army  rank),  as  Quaestor  before  that,  and  previously 
as  military  Tribune  and  police  magistrate.  To  these  earlier  offices 
they  had  been  appointed  without  troubling  the  Concilium  Plebis  and, 
if  of  Patrician  birth,  they  need  not  seek  election  there  at  all.  The 
Concilium  Plebis  was  essentially  a  safety  valve  by  which  popular 
discontent  could,  in  the  last  resort,  make  itself  felt.^  So  far  as  election 
went,  the  voters  merely  had  to  chose  between  men  of  the  same  sort,  all 
of  rank  and  property,  all  with  legal  and  military  training,  all  members 
of  a  definite  class  with  its  own  social  customs  and  standards  of  con- 
duct. They  could  not  have  suddenly  elected  one  of  themselves  and 
there  is  little  evidence  that  they  would  have  chosen  to  do  so  even  if 
given  the  chance. 

We  have  seen  that  the  institutions  which  were  democratic  in  form 
were  aristocratic  in  practice.  But  the  whole  structure  centred  upon  an 
institution,  the  Senate,  which  was  not  democratic  even  in  theory. 
This  body,  with  important  functions  in  foreign  policy,  finance  and 
legislation,  comprised  at  first  300  (later  600)  members,  all  of  whom 
held  or  (as  in  most  cases)  had  previously  held,  high  magisterial  office. 
They  were  not  elected  but  passed  automatically  into  Senate  on  com- 
pletion of  their  period  of  office.  Senate  had  thus  about  twenty  new 
members  each  year,  roughly  replacing  its  losses  by  death.  It  was 
summoned  and  presided  over  by  a  Consul  or,  in  his  absence,  by  the 
Praetor  Urbanus,  who  introduced  the  business  to  be  discussed. 
Having  done  so,  he  asked  the  opinion  of  each  Senator  in  turn  until 
the  sense  of  the  house  had  become  apparent.  Each  Senator  could 
speak  for  as  long  as  he  liked — and  not  necessarily  :;o  the  motion — 
and  could  even,  by  continuing  until  sunset,  talk  the  motion  out.  The 
president  brought  the  discussion  to  an  end  when  he  saw  fit  and  put 
the  matter — although  this  was  rarely  necessary — to  the  vote.  Magis- 
trates in  office  did  not  vote.  The  rest  moved  to  one  side  or  other  of  the 
house.  The  motion  carried  might  be  vetoed  as  unconstitutional  but 
would  otherwise  become  a  'senatus  consultum'  with  legal  effect, 
recorded  and  announced.  In  legislative  matters  the  'senatus  con- 
sultum' did  not  become  a  law  (lex)  until  passed  in  turn  by  an 
assembly.  There  were  no  organised  parties  and  little  use  was  made  of 
committees.  No  minutes  were  kept  and  the  proceedings  were  com- 
paratively brief.  The  Roman  of  Republican  days  was  a  man  of  few 
words  and  the  more  senior  seem,  in  practice,  to  have  swayed  the  rest 
by  their  reputation  more  than  by  their  eloquence.^ 

'  See  Roman  Political  Institutions.  F.  F.  Abbott.  Boston,  1911.  Chapter  X,  pp.  220- 
243.  See  also  Roman  Public  Life.  A.  H.  J.  Greenidge.  London,  1930. 

»  Roman  Public  Life.  A.  H.  J.  Greenidge.  London,  1930.  Chapter  VI.  pp.  261-272. 


106  THE    EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

Viewed  as  a  structure  or  mechanism,  the  Roman  constitution  seems 
complex,  confused  and  unworkable.  It  had,  to  all  appearance,  too 
many  legislatures,  too  many  independent  officials,  too  many  elections 
and  too  many  rules.  No  distinction  was  ever  made  between  legislative, 
executive  and  judicial  functions,  nor  even  between  military  and  civil. 
It  worked,  nevertheless,  to  some  purpose.  Rome  was  governed,  in 
effect,  by  a  class  of  men  of  similar  birth,  similar  training,  similar 
experience  and  (one  might  add)  similar  limitations.  They  all  under- 
stood each  other  very  well  and  probably  reached  agreement  privately 
before  Senate  even  met.  The  magistrates  could  have  nullified  the 
powers  of  Senate.  But  why  should  they?  They  were  magistrates  only 
for  a  time  and  thereafter  Senators  for  life.  The  Senators  might  have 
obstructed  the  work  of  those  in  office.  But  why  should  they?  They 
had  all  been  in  office  themselves.  Senate  might  have  become  danger- 
ously divorced  from  the  people  at  large.  But  it  was  not  altogether 
closed  to  talent,  nor  entirely  insensitive  to  upper  middle-class 
opinion.  The  people,  finally,  might  have  found  means  to  demand  a 
share  in  government.  But  the  Roman  ruling  class  was  a  true  aris- 
tocracy. Its  members  were  respected  for  their  courage  and  ability, 
not  merely  envied  for  their  wealth.  Of  the  aristocrats,  every  one  had 
served  in  the  field  without  disgrace,  every  one  had  a  legal  and  adminis- 
trative training,  every  one  had  served  as  executive  and  judge.  They 
affected,  moreover,  a  Spartan  simplicity  in  dress  and  manner, 
resting  their  influence  merely  on  birth,  reputation  and  known 
achievement  They  were  able,  between  them,  to  conquer  the  known 
world. 

There  have  been  other  ruling  aristocracies  besides  that  of  Rome. 
Nor  are  these  confined  to  the  West.  The  Chinese  aristocracy,  ruling  at 
certain  periods  through  Imperial  machinery  of  government,  was 
unlike  the  Roman  in  being  more  cultured  and  better  educated,  with 
a  sharp  distinction  drawn  between  civil  and  military  functions.  The 
same  would  be  true  of  the  Japanese  aristocrats  of  the  Fujiwara  period 
but  with  this  difference  that  they  also  produced  a  class  of  educated 
women,  whose  diaries  and  novels  were  to  form  a  valuable  part  of  the 
literature  of  Japan.  In  a  complete  study  of  the  subject,  such  as  cannot 
be  attempted  here,  a  variety  of  evidence  could  be  compiled.  It  may, 
however,  be  doubted  whether  any  modern  example  of  aristocracy  can 
be  as  interesting  or  complete  as  that  afforded  by  seventeenth-nine- 
teenth century  England.  It  is  all  the  more  interesting  in  that  the 
adjacent  countries,  showing  the  same  tendencies,  failed  to  achieve  the 
same  result.  They  failed,  moreover,  for  reasons  which  throw  con- 
siderable light  on  the  nature  of  effective  aristocratic  rule.  The 
Monarchy  which  rested  on  Divine  Right  in  the  sixteenth-seventeenth 
centuries    weakened    during    the    eighteenth    century    and    tended. 


ARISTOCRACY  107 

throughout  Europe,  to  turn  either  into  aristocracy  or  into  Monarchy 
self-justified  in  terms  of  enhghtenment.  But  the  success  of  the  aristoc- 
racies in  supplanting  monarchy  varied  with  the  way  in  which  the 
aristocracies  were  formed.  In  some  important  respects,  the  Enghsh 
aristocracy  resembled  no  other. 

To  realise  the  difference  between  the  English  and  most  other 
aristocracies  we  must  observe,  first  of  all,  that  the  English  language 
has  no  equivalent  of  the  French  'de',  the  German  'von'  or  the  Dutch 
'van'.  English  Barons  and  Baronets  are  'of  a  named  locality  but  not 
to  the  extinction  of  their  original  surname.  And,  as  between  surnames, 
there  has  never  been  a  clear  distinction  between  what  is  noble  and  what 
is  not.  We  must  next  observe  that  the  English  law  of  primogeniture, 
in  confining  technical  nobility  to  the  eldest  son,  throws  emphasis  on 
an  actual  title,  within  the  power  of  the  Crown  to  bestow,  and  dis- 
regards the  prestige  of  birth,  which  the  younger  sons  must  equally 
share.  With  these  basic  peculiarities,  the  English  nobility  was  further 
modified  in  its  membership  by  the  salient  events  in  English  history. 
Most  of  the  great  medieval  houses  had  become  extinct,  through  battle 
and  attainder,  during  the  Wars  of  the  Roses.  The  Dukedoms  of 
Cornwall  and  Lancaster  had  been  absorbed  by  the  Royal  House.  A 
new  nobility,  recruited  from  the  landed  gentry  and  merchants,  had 
grown  up  as  a  result  of  the  Dissolution  of  the  Monasteries.  But  this 
in  turn  was  involved  in  the  Civil  Wars  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
many  of  the  older  families  being  ruined  by  fines  and  confiscations.  By 
1660  most  of  the  English  estates  had  changed  hands  repeatedly.  Of 
the  surviving  nobility  hardly  one  could  claim  what  the  French  would 
have  described  as  ancestry.  Families  of  the  'Ancienne  chevalerie'  in 
France  claimed  to  have  been  noble  since  1360.  More  than  that, 
however,  they  needed  to  establish  (before  obtaining  a  commission  in 
the  army)  their  noble  descent  on  both  sides.  They  had  to  show 
sixteen  quarterings  in  their  coat-of-arms.  It  is  to  be  doubted  whether 
any  English  family  could  have  shown  that — let  alone  the  thirty-two 
quarterings  which  were  boasted  in  some  fantastic  and  crumbling 
chateaux.  Queen  Elizabeth  could  not  have  done  so,  one  of  her  an- 
cestors having  been  Lord  Mayor  of  London.  As  for  the  noble  houses, 
they  had  been  constantly  marrying,  to  their  advantage,  into  the  families 
of  lawyers,  wine-merchants,  shipowners  and  adventurers.  Nor  were 
their  younger  sons  averse  to  trade.  As  Voltaire  pointed  out,  at  the 
time  when  Sir  Robert  Walpole  governed  Great  Britain,  his 
younger  brother  was  no  more  than  a  Factor  at  Aleppo.  It  was  this 
absence  of  caste  which  facilitated  the  concentration  of  political, 
military,  religious  and  financial  powers  among  the  same  people.  The 
English  aristocracy  of  the  eighteenth  century  was,  in  fact,  a  body  of 
very  mixed  origin,  constantly  recruited  from  below,  with  highly 


108  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

developed  instincts  in  law  and  business.  By  French  standards,  noble 
birth  in  England  simply  did  not  exist. 

The  aristocrat,  in  the  English  sense,  first  appears  in  the  reign  of 
Elizabeth.  He  was  a  man  of  respectable  family,  who  at  least  knew 
who  his  grandfather  was.  He  was  a  landowner  of  considerable  wealth 
and  made  up  in  education  for  what  he  lacked  in  ancestry.  He  was 
something  of  a  scholar  and  often  a  musician  or  poet.  He  was  an 
athlete,  a  horseman  and  soldier  and  sometimes  a  seaman  as  well. 
By  the  early  seventeenth  century  his  training  had  been  standardised. 
From  the  village  school  or  a  private  tutor,  he  went  to  the  grammar  or 
public  school.  Then  he  entered  the  University  and  completed  his 
groundwork  in  Latin,  Mathematics,  Divinity  and  perhaps  Greek, 
Leaving  Oxford  or  Cambridge,  very  probably  without  graduating, 
he  next  attended  the  Inns  of  Court  and  obtained  at  least  a  smattering 
of  law.  Then  he  set  off  on  the  Grand  Tour  to  France,  Germany  and 
Italy,  spending  a  year  or  more  in  learning  French  and  Italian.  There 
followed  a  campaign  or  two  in  the  Low  Countries.  After  that  he  was 
fit  for  duty  as  Justice  of  the  Peace,  fit  to  appear  at  Court  and  fit 
before  long  to  take  a  seat  in  Parliament.  How  developed  even  before 
then  were  the  traditions  of  Parliament  may  be  learnt  from  a  treatise 
of  1562-6,  published  in  1583. 

...  In  the  disputing  is  a  mervelous  good  order  used  in  the  lower  house. 
He  that  standeth  uppe  bareheaded  is  understanded  that  he  will  speake 
to  the  bill.  If  more  stande  up,  who  that  first  is  judged  to  arise,  is  first 
harde,  though  the  one  doe  prayse  the  law,  the  other  diswade  it,  yet 
there  is  no  altercation.  For  everie  man  speaketh  as  to  the  speaker,  not 
as  one  to  an  other,  for  that  is  against  the  order  of  the  house.  It  is  also 
taken  against  the  order  to  name  him  whom  ye  doe  confute,  but  by 
circumlocution,  as  he  that  speaketh  with  the  bill,  or  he  that  spake 
against  the  bill  and  gave  this  and  this  reason.  And  so  with  perpetual! 
Oration  not  with  altercation,  he  goeth  through  till  he  do  make  an  end. 
He  that  once  hath  spoken  on  a  bill  though  he  be  confuted  straight, 
that  day  may  not  replie,  no  though  he  would  channge  his  opinion.  So 
that  to  one  bill  in  one  day  one  may  not  in  that  house  speake  twise,  for 
else  one  or  two  with  altercation  woulde  spende  all  the  time.^ 

Such  rules  of  debate  as  these  were  the  work  of  gentlemen,  lawyers, 
merchants  and  soldiers;  men  of  great  experience.  There  was  little  of 
democracy  about  it  but  there  was  evidence  of  a  close  alliance  between 
aristocracy  and  middle  class.  It  provided  a  good  school  of  statesman- 
ship even  when  the  House  of  Lords  was  more  important.  By  the  late 
seventeenth  century  moreover  the  English  aristocrat  rarely  made  a 
mistake  over  architecture,  gardens,  portraits,  trees,  horses  or  dogs. 
He  was  rightly  trained  for  his  main  political  task,  which  was  to 

'  De  Republica  Angloniin:  A  Discourse  on  the  Commonwealth  of  England.  By  Sir 
Thomas  Smith.  Ed.  by  L.  Alston,  p.  34. 


ARISTOCRACY  109 

establish   aristocratic   government    under  the  guise   of  monarchy. 

The  fall  of  James  II  and  the  crowning  of  William  and  Mary  brought 
in  a  weakened  monarchy,  dependent  on  the  party  which  had  brought 
about  the  revolution  of  1688 ;  a  party  which  might  turn  at  any  time  to 
intrigue  with  the  fallen  king.  What  is  remarkable  is  the  speed  and 
certainty  with  which  the  English  aristocrats  set  up  a  government  of 
their  own,  retaining  a  diminished  kingship  but  effectively  concen- 
trating the  power  in  their  own  hands.  By  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century  the  Government,  the  Parliament,  the  Church,  the  Army  and 
the  Universities  were  all  so  many  different  aspects  of  aristocracy.  And 
all  Europe  watched  to  see  what  the  result  would  be  in  terms  of 
strength  or  weakness.  The  answer  came  in  the  Seven  Years  War  of 
1756-63  and  the  total  defeat  of  France.  Henceforth  the  upholders  of 
monarchy  could  say,  if  they  wished,  that  an  aristocratic  form  of  rule 
was  impious,  unprecedented  and  wrong.  But  they  could  not  regard  it 
as  unworkable,  and  they  could  not  deny  its  success. 

To  what  was  this  success  due?  It  was  due,  no  doubt,  in  part,  to 
causes  unconnected  with  the  form  of  government  as  established.  But, 
such  causes  apart,  aristocracy  revealed  a  certain  strength  of  its  own. 
It  combined  scope  for  individual  enterprise  with  a  certain  consistency 
in  public  effort.  Sea  power,  trade  and  colonisation  formed  an  intricate 
pattern  in  which  war  was  used  to  capture  trade  and  trade  increased  to 
pay  for  war.  Only  an  aristocracy  of  that  peculiar  kind  could  have 
achieved  its  purpose  in  that  peculiar  way.  It  was  the  close  connection 
between  statesmen,  admirals,  shipowners,  planters,  underwriters, 
gentry,  soldiers  and  bankers  that  made  success  possible.  More  than 
that,  the  structure  of  society  provided  initiative  where  it  was  wanted 
(on  the  fringes  of  a  growing  empire)  and  consistency  where  that  was 
wanted  (at  the  centre).  The  policies  of  kings  proved,  for  the  purposes 
of  naval  war,  at  once  too  interfering  and  too  variable.  Where  so  much 
depends  upon  a  single  man,  policy  may  waver  when  he  falls  sick  or 
grows  old.  Policy  may  be  reversed  when  he  dies.  But  the  solid 
commercial  interests  of  a  governing  class  are  fairly  permanent  in 
their  nature.  Behind  the  brilliance  or  eccentricity  of  the  individual 
lurks  the  abiding  purpose  of  a  class. 


CHAPTER    IX 
Aristocracy  justified  in  Theory 


THE  essence  of  aristocracy  lies  in  the  respect  accorded  to  the 
aristocrat  by  others;  a  respect  to  be  enhanced  more  by  deeds 
than  words.  Respect,  moreover,  is  rarely  accorded  to  those  who 
demand  it.  In  a  well  established  and  etTectivc  aristocracy  the  member 
of  the  ruling  class  assumes,  but  does  not  explain,  his  superiority. 
Should  he  be  compelled  to  justify  his  power,  it  will  be  proof  that  his 
position  is  crumbling.  The  order  obeyed  without  question  comes 
normally  from  someone  to  whom  the  possibility  of  disobedience  does 
not  even  occur.  It  is  natural,  therefore,  that  books  written  avowedly 
to  justify  aristocracy  arc  rare.  And  aristocracy  is  apt  to  masquerade 
as  something  else;  as  monarchy  sometimes  or  even  as  democracy. 
The  true  aristocrat  is  respected  for  his  virtues;  and  modesty  is  one 
of  them. 

The  only  superiority  a  man  can  claim  without  some  loss  of  dignity 
is  that  of  descent.  For  one  thing,  the  claim  can  be  silent;  the  display 
of  a  name,  a  title,  a  coat-of-arms.  For  another,  the  superiority  claimed 
is  not  one  of  personal  merit  but  of  ancestry.  It  is  permissible  to  claim 
for  an  ancestor  what  one  cannot  claim  for  oneself.  As  against  this,  the 
most  effective  aristocracy  is  one  in  which  noble  birth  plays  only  a 
minor  part.  In  such  an  aristocracy,  continually  recruited  from  below 
and  always  sensitive  to  the  opinion  of  the  people  (or,  anyway,  the 
people  who  matter),  to  boast  of  ancestry  may  give  actual  offence  to 
others.  Among  the  ruling  class  of  eighteenth-nineteenth  century 
England  there  were  men  without  birth,  fortune  or  even  any  very 
obvious  ability;  people  who  were  'in  society'  through  being  thought 
amusing,  good-looking,  well-dressed  or  somehow  useful.  It  was  and 
had  always  been  impossible  to  say  who  exactly  the  aristocrats  were,  or 
why.  So  that  English  defenders  of  aristocracy  appeared,  in  general,  to 
be  defending  something  else;  usually,  the  constitution.  The  theorists 
of  Republican  Rome  had  no  easier  task  and  our  earliest  justifications 
of  aristocracy  are  no  more  candid  about  it  than  are  the  most  recent. 

The  Romans  were  not  themselves  given  to  theorising  about  politics 
and  they  left  it  to  a  Greek,  Polybius,  to  explain  their  institutions  to 
posterity.  He  had  at  least  the  merit  of  knowing  his  subject,  being  held 
in  Italy  as  a  hostage  of  the  Achaean  League  for  sixteen  years,  from 
167  to   151    ».(".   His  main  intention  was  to  write  a  history  of  the 

110 


ARISTOCRACY     JUSTIFIED     IN     THEORY  111 

Republic  and  it  was  only  incidentally  that  he  paused  to  study  the 
principles  of  Roman  government.^  He  follows  Aristotle  in  assuming 
a  sequence  in  the  forms  of  rule,  postulating  a  periodic  return  to 
barbarism  as  the  result  of  pestilence,  famine  and  flood.  He  suggests 
that  the  sequence  in  the  forms  of  rule  can  be  arrested  only  by  com- 
bining them  in  a  constitution  wherein  the  subversive  tendencies  of 
each  are  counteracted  by  the  rest.  He  finds  such  a  system  in  that 
planned  for  Sparta  by  Lycurgus  and  thinks  that  the  Romans  have 
reached  the  same  goal  by  a  less  theoretical  route.  He  explains  how  the 
Consul  is  held  in  check  by  the  Senate  and  the  Senate  in  turn  by  the 
Assemblies,  the  members  of  which  will  come,  as  soldiers,  under  the 
absolute  power  of  the  Consul.  Cicero  (who  should  have  known  better) 
follows  this  theory  in  his  Republic  and  concludes,  in  effect,  that  every- 
thing has  been  so  wisely  arranged  by  the  Romans'  ancestors  that  there 
is  little  or  no  reason  to  alter  anything.  At  the  time  he  wrote  it  was  in 
fact  altering  itself  fairly  rapidly  and  heading,  indeed,  for  a  state  of 
anarchy  which  could  end  only  in  dictatorship.  What  he  describes  is, 
in  eflfect,  the  Republic  he  would  have  liked  to  preserve.  And  he 
regards  it,  as  Polybius  did,  as  a  balanced  regime,  not  as  an  example  of 
aristocracy  in  decline.  That  it  was  a  declining  aristocracy  is  apparent, 
nevertheless,  from  all  that  followed. 

From  the  time  of  the  Roman  Republic  down  to  the  end  of  the 
seventeenth  century  a.d.  there  are  few  examples  of  aristocracy  in 
Europe,  and  such  as  there  are  seem  to  be  limited  in  scale.  Venice  was 
ruled  by  an  aristocracy  of  merchants  but  so,  in  a  sense,  were  many 
other  medieval  towns.  The  Venetian  example,  interesting  as  it  is, 
rises  hardly  above  the  level  (in  scale)  of  the  City  State.  Where,  how- 
ever, as  in  the  Netherlands,  a  federation  of  City  States  comes  into 
existence,  the  opportunity  occurs  for  aristocracy  on  a  rather  larger 
scale.  The  opportunity  was  there  but  the  Dutch  inclined  rather  more 
towards  democracy  and  served,  with  England,  to  discredit  that  form 
of  rule.  One  of  the  greatest  of  Dutchmen,  Hugo  Grotius  (1583-1645), 
who  first  defined  the  word  'State'  for  the  purposes  of  International 
Law,^  gave  his  decided  preference  for  Monarchy.  It  remained  for 
England  to  demonstrate  the  merits  of  aristocratic  rule,  doing  so  in 
conscious  imitation  of  Rome.  The  seventeenth  century  had  witnessed 
a  struggle  in  England  between  monarchy  and  aristocracy;  a  struggle 
only  possible  because  the  aristocrats  disagreed  with  each  other  about 
religion.  The  momentary  result  was  an  experiment  in  democracy 

'  A  History  of  Political  Theories,  Ancient  and  Medieval.  W.  A.  Dunning.  New  York, 
1927.  pp.  113-114. 

^  A  community  of  Western  and  Christian  civilisation,  with  an  organised  government 
capable  of  making  and  observing  treaties,  with  a  fixed  territory  within  which  its 
sovereignty  is  complete,  and  a  stability  which  seems  likely  to  offer  permanence.  See 
Western  Political  Thought.  An  Historical  Introduction  from  the  Origins  to  Rousseau. 
John  Bowie.  London    1947.  Chapters  IV  and  VII. 


112  THF     FVOIUTION     OF      POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

which  ended  promptly  in  military  dictatorship.  This  brief  experience 
convinced  the  English  that  monarchy  was  preferable  to  either  and  the 
restoration  of  Charles  II  in  1660  might  have,  just  conceivably,  re- 
sulted in  a  monarchy  of  the  fashion  set  by  France.  But  the  astute 
Charles  II  was  succeeded  by  a  Roman  Catholic.  This  sufficed  to  unite 
the  two  religious  parties  for  just  long  enough  to  dethrone  James  II 
and  instal  William  of  Orange  in  his  place.  From  1688  the  belief  of 
the  English  aristocracy  was  that  monarchy  was  necessary,  as  had 
already  been  proved,  but  that  the  real  power  must  be  vested  in  them- 
selves. To  explain  what  they  had  done,  and  what  they  intended,  they 
needed  their  own  political  prophet.  In  John  Locke  they  found  him. 
John  Locke  (1632-1704)  was  a  scholar  patronised  by  the  Earl  of 
Shaftesbury  who  came  to  England,  from  exile,  in  1689,  and  published 
his  two  Treatises  of  Government  in  1690.  His  first  object  was  to 
demolish  the  Putriarcha  of  Sir  Robert  Filmer,  in  vogue  since  1680; 
his  second,  to  justify  the  Revolution  of  1688  by  proving  that 
sovereignty  lies  in  the  community,  not  in  the  king.  It  is  needless 
to  follow  Locke  all  the  way  in  his  refutation  of  Filmer,  for  the  dis- 
cussion is  one  which  must  seem  to  us  rather  futile.  Filmer  had  rightly 
insisted  that  paternity  is,  in  some  sense,  the  origin  of  political  power. 
But  his  attempt  to  show  that  the  Stuart  kings  had  their  sovereignty  by 
a  right  of  descent  or  right  of  conveyance  going  back  to  Adam  is  not 
particularly  helpful.  Locke  writes  eleven  chapters  to  show  that  this 
claim  is  baseless  and  finally  summarises  his  argument  in  a  more 
compact  form,  as  follows: — ^ 

Firstly.  That  Adam  had  not,  either  by  natural  right  of  fatherhood  or  by 

positive  donation  from  God,  any  such  authority  over  his  children,  nor 

dominion  over  the  world,  as  is  pretended. 

Secondly.  That  if  he  had,  his  heirs  yet  had  no  right  to  it. 

Thirdly.  That  if  his  heirs  had  .  .  .  the  right  of  succession  .  .  .  could  not 

have  been  certainly  determined. 

Fourthly.  That  if  even  that  had  been  determined,  yet  the  knowledge  of 

which  is  the  eldest  line  .  .  .  [is]  .  .  .  utterly  lost. 

With  this  reasoning  we  may  agree,  turning  however  with  some 
relief  to  his  more  constructive  work  in  Book  II.  Locke  begins  his  own 
theory  of  government  by  firmly  stating  that  men  are  born  equal  when 
in  a  state  of  nature. 

This  equality  of  men  by  Nature,  the  judicious  Hooker  looks  upon 
as  so  evident  in  itself  and  beyond  all  question,  that  he  makes  it  the 
foundation  of  that  obligation  to  mutual  love  amongst  men  on  which 
he  builds  the  duties  they  owe  one  another  and  from  whence  he  derives 
the  great  maxims  of  justice  and  charity." 

^  Of  Civil  Government.  John  Locke.  Everyman  edition.  London,  1943.  p.  117. 
^Ibid.  p.  119. 


ARISTOCRACY     JUSTIFIED     IN     THEORY  113 

Actually,  Hooker  is  not  quite  as  definite  as  that.  He  merely  asserts 
that: 

Every  independent  multitude,  before  any  certain  form  of  regiment 
established,  hath,  under  God's  supreme  authority,  full  dominion  over 
itself,  even  as  a  man  not  tied  with  the  bond  of  subjection  as  yet  unto 
any  other,  hath  over  himself  the  like  power.^ 

Locke  nevertheless  assumes  agreement  and  goes  on  to  maintain 
that  men  are  also  born  free  except  in  that  the  Law  of  Nature  enjoins 
each  'that  being  all  equal  and  independent,  no  one  ought  to  harm 
another  in  his  life,  health,  liberty  or  possessions'.  The  duty  of  en- 
forcing this  law  is  vested  in  all  alike.  The  right  of  property  derives 
from  the  value  of  work  put  into  it.  Children  are  born  in  a  subordina- 
tion to  parents  but  outgrow  it  and  thereafter  need  merely  honour 
their  parents.  He  admits  that  parental  authority  tends,  in  practice,  to 
linger.  'Thus  the  natural  fathers  of  families,  by  an  insensible  change, 
became  the  politic  monarchs  of  them  too'  and  sometimes  left  able  and 
worthy  heirs.  But  this,  he  insists,  does  not  create  Civil  Government, 
the  characteristic  of  which  is  law  and  its  impartial  enforcement. 
Political  Society  derives  not  from  fatherhood  but  from  agreement. 

Men  being,  as  has  been  said,  by  nature  all  free,  equal  and  independ- 
ent, no  one  can  be  put  out  of  this  estate  and  subjected  to  the  political 
power  of  another  without  his  own  consent,  which  is  done  by  agreeing 
with  other  men,  to  join  and  unite  into  a  community  for  their  comfort- 
able, safe,  and  peaceable  living,  one  amongst  another,  in  a  secure 
enjoyment  of  their  properties,  and  a  greater  security  against  any  that 
are  not  of  it.  .  .  .  When  any  number  of  men  have  so  consented  to  make 
one  community  or  government,  they  are  thereby  presently  incorpora- 
ted, and  make  one  body  politic,  wherein  the  majority  have  a  right  to 
act  and  conclude  the  rest. 

Locke  here  postulates  a  society  formed  before  the  nature  of  its 
government  has  been  agreed.  He  meets  the  objection  that  no  account 
exists  of  men  so  forming  a  political  society  by  explaining  that 
'Government  is  everywhere  antecedent  to  records  ...  [so  that] ...  it  is 
with  commonwealths  as  with  particular  persons,  they  are  commonly 
ignorant  of  their  own  births  and  infancies.  .  .  .'  He  goes  on,  however, 

I  will  not  deny  that  if  we  look  back  as  far  as  history  will  direct  us, 
towards  the  original  of  commonwealths,  we  shall  generally  find  them 
under  the  government  and  administration  of  one  man.^ 

He  even  admits  that  in  small  family  societies,  'government  com- 
monly began  in  the  father'.  But  when  different  families  came  to  live 
together,  and  when  a  father  died  'it  is  not  to  be  doubted,  but  they 

'  The  Political  Ideas  of  Richuid  Hooker.  E.  T.  Davics.  London,  1946.  p.  65.  Hooker 
asserts  the  'Contract'  theory  as  did,  later.  Bishop  Hoadly. 
-  Locke,  op.  lit.  p.  168. 


114  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

used  their  natural  freedom  to  set  up  him  whom  they  judged  the 
ablest.  .  .  .' 

Conceding  that  the  earliest  governments  of  which  we  have  record 
were  monarchical,  he  asks  why  people  'generally  pitched  upon  this 
form'.  He  refers  to  the  example  of  paternal  rule,  to  men's  initial 
inexperience  of  tyranny  and  to  the  need  for  leadership  in  war,  and 
concludes  that  men  would  naturally  'choose  the  wisest  and  bravest 
man  to  conduct  them  in  their  wars  .  .  .  and  in  this  chiefly  be  their 
ruler'.  He  points  out,  however,  that  forms  of  government  vary.  The 
important  thing  is  that  men  voluntarily  enter  it  by  agreement.  They 
do  this  in  order  to  preserve  their  property,  obtain  an  impartial  judge 
and  ensure  that  his  judgments  are  enforced.  In  thus  forming  a 
society  they  give  up  to  it  their  original  equality,  liberty  and  executive 
power.  But  the  power  of  the  society  must  be  for  the  common  good 
and  must  achieve  the  three  basic  purposes  for  which  it  was  formed, 
and  thus  ensure  'the  peace,  safety  and  public  good  of  the  people'. 
This  can  be  done  through  democracy,  oligarchy  or  monarchy,  or  any 
compromise  between  them.^  But,  whatever  the  form  of  government, 
the  supreme  power  must  be  the  legislative. 

The  legislative  power,  though  supreme,  is  not  limitless.  It  can  be  no 
greater  than  the  power  originally  entrusted  to  it  by  individuals.  And 
they  cannot  give  to  it  what  they  do  not  possess.  As  no  one  has  the 
right  to  destroy  or  enslave  either  himself  or  anyone  else,  that  right 
cannot  have  been  transferred  to  the  legislative.  That  body,  therefore, 
'can  never  have  a  right  to  destroy,  enslave  or  designedly  to  impoverish 
the  subjects'.  By  similar  reasoning,  the  fact  that  no  man  can  be  judge 
in  his  own  cause  prevents  the  individual  from  conferring  any  such 
rights  on  the  legislative.  The  judicial  power  must  be  separate.  Govern- 
ment must  be  by  declared  laws,  enforced  by  authorised  judges. 

These  are  the  bounds  which  the  trust  that  is  put  in  them  by  the 
society  and  the  law  of  God  and  Nature  have  set  to  the  legislative 
power  of  every  Commonwealth,  in  all  forms  of  government.  First: 
They  are  to  govern  by  promulgated  established  laws,  not  to  be  varied 
in  particular  cases,  but  to  have  one  rule  for  rich  and  poor,  for  the 
favourite  at  Court  and  the  countryman  at  plough.  Secondly :  These  laws 
also  ought  to  be  designed  for  no  other  end  ultimately  but  the  good  of  the 
people.  Thirdly:  They  must  not  raise  taxes  on  the  property  of  the 
people  without  the  consent  of  the  people  given  by  themselves  or  their 
deputies.  And  this  properly  concerns  only  such  governments  where  the 
legislative  is  always  in  being,  or  at  least  where  the  people  have  not 
reserved  any  part  of  the  legislative  to  deputies,  to  be  from  time  to  time 
chosen  by  themselves.  Fourthly :  Legislative  neither  must  nor  can  trans- 
fer the  power  of  making  laws  to  anybody  else  or  place  it  anywhere 
but  where  the  people  have.' 

'  Locke,  op.  cit.  p.  189. 

'  Locke,  op.  cit.  pp.  182-183. 


ARISTOCRACY     JUSTIFIED     IN     THEORY  115 

Locke  argues  that  the  supreme  power  cannot  take  any  man's 
property  without  his  consent. 

.  .  .  For  the  preservation  of  property  being  the  end  of  government,  and 
that  for  which  men  enter  into  society,  it  necessarily  supposes  and  re- 
quires that  the  people  should  have  property,  without  which  they  must 
be  supposed  to  lose  that  by  entering  into  society  which  was  the  end 
for  which  they  entered  into  it;  too  gross  an  absurdity  for  any  man 
to  own. 

True,  there  must  be  taxation  but  only  by  the  consent  of  the 
majority,  given  by  themselves  or  by  their  representatives. 

Locke  maintains  that  there  must  be,  in  addition  to  the  legislative 
body,  'a  power  always  in  being  which  should  see  to  the  execution  of 
the  laws'  and  a  power  to  deal  with  'war  and  peace,  leagues  and 
alliances'.  These  two  powers  must,  in  practice,  be  the  same  and  with 
the  additional  duty,  most  likely,  of  convening  the  legislative  body. 
But  the  legislative,  which  Locke  conceives  as  only  periodically  in 
session,  remains  superior  to  the  executive  power,  normally  entrusted 
to  a  single  man. 

Where  the  legislative  and  executive  power  are  in  distinct  hands,  as 
they  are  in  all  moderated  monarchies  and  well-framed  governments, 
there  the  good  of  the  society  requires  that  several  things  should  be  left 
to  the  discretion  of  him  that  has  the  executive  power.^ 

He  considers  that  the  ruler  must  have  a  certain  discretion,  if  only 
to  prevent  injustice  by  a  too  strict  observance  of  the  law.  This  is 
prerogative,  an  equity  which  may  come  in  time  to  be  embodied  in  the 
law,  such  being  no  encroachment  on  prerogative. 

Those  who  say  otherwise  speak  as  if  the  prince  had  a  distinct  and 
separate  interest  from  the  good  of  the  community,  and  was  not  made 
for  it;  the  root  and  source  from  which  spring  almost  all  those  evils 
and  disorders  which  happen  in  kingly  governments. 

But  Locke  is  careful  to  explain  that  the  prerogative  of  a  king  should 
be  something  far  short  of  despotism,  which  is  no  less  than 

...  an  absolute  arbitrary  power  one  man  has  over  another,  to  take 
away  his  life  whenever  he  pleases;  and  this  is  a  power  which  neither 
Nature  gives,  for  it  has  made  no  such  distinction  between  one  man  and 
another,  nor  compact  can  convey.  For  man,  not  having  such  an 
arbitrary  power  over  his  own  life,  cannot  give  another  man  power  over 
it,  but  it  is  the  effect  only  of  forfeiture  which  the  aggressor  makes  of  his 
own  life  when  he  puts  himself  into  the  state  of  war  with  another.  .  .  . 
And  thus  captives,  taken  in  a  just  and  lawful  war,  and  such  only,  are 
subject  to  a  despotical  power.^ 

■  Ibid.  p.  199. 

^  Locke,  op.  cit.  p.  205. 


116  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

Locke  quotes  James  I  as  stating  that  he  was  bound  by  'the  funda- 
mental laws  of  his  kingdom',  both  tacitly  and  by  coronation  oath, 
and  but  for  that  would  be  a  mere  tyrant.  He  explains,  however,  that  it 
is  not  only  monarchies  that  may  be  tyrannical.  'Wherever  law  ends, 
tyranny  begins'.  And  the  resistance  to  an  unlawful  tyranny  may  lead 
to  the  dissolution  of  government. 

This  last  subject  is  discussed  in  Chapter  XIX.*  Governments  are 
overturned,  he  explains,  in  two  ways;  by  foreign  conquest,  or  by  in- 
ternal dissension.  Foreign  conquest  destroys  society  itself  and  needs 
no  further  comment.  Internal  dissension  may  cause  the  legislative  to 
break  up  or  dissolve,  as  for  instance  when  the  prince  'sets  up  his  own 
arbitrary  will  in  place  of  the  laws'  or  'hinders  the  legislative  from 
assembling  ...  or  from  acting  freely'.  The  prince  can  produce  the 
same  result  by  tampering  with  the  electoral  system,  by  betraying  the 
State  to  a  foreign  power,  or  (finally)  by  so  neglecting  and  abandoning 
his  office  that  the  laws  are  no  longer  enforced.  The  government  can 
be  as  readily  overturned  through  the  legislative  or  the  prince  making 
themselves  'masters  or  arbitrary  disposers  of  the  lives,  liberties  or 
fortunes  of  the  people'.  For  as  the  reason  'why  men  enter  into  society 
is  the  preservation  of  their  property',  a  failure  to  preserve  it  destroys 
government  and  justifies  revolt.  Even  the  legislative  can  become 
corrupt. 

The  end  of  government  is  the  good  of  mankind;  and  which  is  best 
for  mankind,  that  the  people  should  be  always  exposed  to  the  bound- 
less will  of  tyranny,  or  that  the  rulers  should  be  sometimes  liable  to  be 
opposed  when  they  grow  exorbitant  in  the  use  of  their  power,  and 
employ  it  for  the  destruction,  and  not  the  preservation,  of  the  proper- 
ties of  their  people?" 

Locke's  general  argument,  of  which  the  above  is  more  or  less  the 
conclusion,  can  be  summarised  thus: — Men  are  born  equal,  with 
equal  rights  under  the  Law  of  Nature.  They  agree  with  each  other  to 
form  a  society,  mainly  to  preserve  property  and  secure  justice. 
Justice  can  derive  only  from  law;  so  the  supreme  power  in  society 
must  be  the  legislative.  But  even  the  legislative  is  limited  in  power  by 
the  original  agreement;  nor  may  it  encroach  on  the  powers  of  the 
judiciary.  There  must  also  be  an  executive,  probably  a  single  ruler, 
but  he  too  must  be  restrained  by  law.  Finally,  when  the  legislative  is 
overturned,  the  society  is  dissolved  and  men  are  free  to  rebel  and 
start  afresh  with  another  mutual  agreement. 

As  an  argument  this  may  not  seem  particularly  impressive.  The 
basic  assumptions  are  far  less  convincing  than  those  of  Sir  Robert 


'  Locke,  op.  cit.  p.  224. 
•  Locke,  op.  cit.  p.  233. 


ARISTOCRACY     JUSTIFIED     IN     THEORY  117 

Filmer,  and  the  theory  of  the  formation  of  society  by  agreement  is 
quite  unhistorical.  If  the  agreement  does  not  exist,  the  proper 
limitations  in  the  power  of  legislative  and  executive  are  not  estab- 
lished; and  the  right  of  rebellion  remains  as  doubtful  as  ever.  The 
argument  need  convince  no  one.  But  Locke's  treatises  are  significant 
in  that  they  embody  four  vital  political  ideas,  arising  not  from  aca- 
demic theories  but  from  the  political  experience  of  his  generation. 
These  reiterated  ideas  are  Property,  Law,  the  Separation  of  Legis- 
lative, Executive  and  Judicial  powers,  and  the  Limits  set  to  the  powers 
of  government  as  such.  These  have  proved  potent  ideas,  especially  in 
America.  But  it  might  not  seem,  at  first  sight,  that  Locke  had  pro- 
duced exactly  the  arguments  needed  to  support  an  aristocracy  in 
power  following  the  Revolution  of  1688.  This  talk  of  original  equality 
might  not  be  greeted  with  any  deafening  applause  in  the  House  of 
Lords.  But  all  that  was  merely  theoretical  stuff  which  few  politicians 
would  bother  to  read.  His  essential,  positive  doctrines — property,  law, 
the  separation  of  powers  and  the  limits  set  to  government — all  add 
up  to  one  thing,  and  that  is  Freedom;  or  the  freedom,  anyway,  of  the 
property  owner.  And  while  the  Peers  of  1688  intended  to  keep  power 
for  themselves  (as  against  the  king),  the  gentry  at  large  cared  more 
for  freedom  than  for  a  share  in  government.  Locke  says  nothing 
directly  to  justify  aristocracy.  How  could  he?  In  England  aristocracy 
could  never  be  justified  for  it  could  not  even  be  defined.  It  did  not 
mean  birth;  it  never  meant  title;  it  did  not  always  mean  wealth;  it 
seldom  meant  even  dress,  fashion  or  accent,  and  rarely  could  be 
equated  with  education.  Its  most  stable  feature  was  personal  freedom 
and  property  in  land,  to  be  defended  by  law  against  the  interference 
of  government.  And  this  defence  of  property  and  freedom  rested  with 
a  legislature  representative  of  property  and  a  judiciary  which  govern- 
ment could  not  control. 

The  English  aristocracy,  like  their  feudal  predecessors  at  Runny- 
mede,  involuntarily  secured  for  others  what  they  were  intent  only  to 
gain  for  themselves.  To  have  secured  freedom  for  the  peerage  would, 
in  England,  have  left  all  their  younger  brothers  in  bondage.  To  have 
limited  privileges  to  men  with  a  coat-of-arms  dating  from  before  1500 
would  have  excluded  half  the  people  who  were  obviously  important. 
To  have  confined  privileges  to  men  with  a  coat  of  arms  dating  from 
before  1360  would  have  excluded  practically  everyone.  Explanations 
of  what  constituted  an  'esquire'  or  'gentleman'  were  never  more  than 
partly  successful,  including  as  they  did  a  fair  number  of  those  it  was 
intended  to  keep  out  and  excluding  a  few  of  those  who  had  obviously 
to  come  in.  As  no  exact  definition  was  possible,  as  in  France,  of  the 
word  'gentleman',  the  freedom  of  the  aristocrat  came  to  be  conferred 
inadvertently  on  the  merchant  and  farmer. 


118  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

As  regards  immediate  effect,  we  must  remember  that  Locke  wrote 
to  justify  an  event  which  had  taken  place.  His  reasoning  all  leads  up 
to  a  description  of  the  constitution  of  1688  and  a  defence  of  the 
changes  which  had  brought  it  into  being.  His  work  was  not  at  first 
accepted  with  much  enthusiasm  by  the  Whigs  (perhaps  because  he 
proved  too  much)  and  it  was  naturally  resented  by  the  Tories  as 
directly  contradicting  their  doctrine  of  Divine  Right. ^  Locke  was 
rewarded  by  two  offers  of  an  embassy  (which  he  refused)  and  by  the 
offer  of  a  minor  government  post  (which  he  accepted)  in  1696.  It  was 
not  until  after  his  death  in  1704  that  his  doctrines  began  to  gain 
influence  and  he  had  a  definite  vogue  throughout  the  eighteenth 
century. 

The  two  political  treatises  were  not  Locke's  only  works  and  we 
must  note  at  least  one  other,  An  Essay  concerning  Toleration  (written 
in  1667).  In  this  he  asserts  that  the  ruler's  functions  are  confined  to 
'securing  the  civil  peace  and  property  of  his  subjects'.  He  divides 
religious  beliefs  into  three  categories:  those  'purely  speculative'  such 
as  'the  belief  of  the  Trinity,  purgatory,  transubstantiation,  antipodes'; 
those  which  affect  conduct  'in  matters  of  indifferency'  such  as 
marriage,  divorce,  polygamy,  wills,  holidays,  food  and  abstinence; 
and  lastly,  those  'moral  virtues  and  vices'  which  'concern  society  and 
are  also  good  or  bad  in  their  own  nature'.  As  regards  the  first,  Locke 
holds  that  there  should  be  complete  freedom.  As  regards  the  second, 
the  government  may  command  or  forbid  actions  which  affect  'the 
peace,  safety  and  security'  of  the  people.  As  for  the  third,  Locke 
firmly  asserts  that  'the  law-maker  hath  nothing  to  do  with  moral 
virtues  and  vices  .  .  .  any  otherwise  than  barely  as  they  are  subservient 
to  the  good  and  preservation  of  mankind  under  government'.  Locke 
expressed  these  views  again  in  his  Letter  concerning  Toleration  (1689), 
by  which  year  the  principle  of  toleration  had,  in  England,  been  more 
or  less  agreed.  Locke  had  incidentally  had  some  part  in  drawing  up 
the  Constitution  of  the  American  State  of  Carolina  in  1669,  in  which 
the  freedom  of  the  colonists  to  worship  as  they  chose  was  expressly 
laid  down.  This  was  the  beginning  of  the  not  inconsiderable  influence 
his  ideas  were  to  have  in  America.  His  doctrine  of  the  separation  of 
powers  is  embodied  even  in  the  United  States  constitution.  As 
against  that,  it  might  well  be  argued  that  Locke's  plea  for  toleration, 
and  the  limits  he  sets  to  the  functions  of  the  State  (both  being  aspects 
of  freedom)  are  his  most  valuable,  if  not  wholly  original,  contributions 
to  political  thought.  It  would  be  untrue  to  assert  that  Locke's  dream 
of  a  'secular'  State  (without  moral  purpose)  was  the  reality  of 
eighteenth  century  England.  But  it  came  more  nearly  true  than  it 
did  anywhere  else  or  indeed  than  it  has  in  England  since.  As  for  his 

'John  Locke  s  Political  Philosophy.  J.  W.  Gough.  Oxford,  1950.  pp.  120-1,35. 


ARISTOCRACY     JUSTIFIED     IN     THEORY  119 

main  principle  of  freedom,  that  was  stoutly  maintained  and  was  still 
being  upheld  when  the  century  drew  to  its  close. 

It  was  indeed  towards  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  that  the 
whole  spirit  of  the  English  system  was  summarised  by  Edmund  Burke 
(1730-1797).  Burke  was  a  pupil,  in  some  measure,  of  Montesquieu, 
having,  like  everyone  else,  read  and  admired  his  book  Esprit  des 
Lois  (1748).  This  work  was  based  in  part  on  a  study  of  English 
institutions  and  in  part  on  a  reading  of  Locke.  He  naturally  recom- 
mended a  constitutional  monarchy.  His  approach  was,  nevertheless, 
for  the  period,  extremely  scientific,  revealing  some  idea  of  ethnology 
and  criminology.  His  book  ran  through  some  twenty-two  editions  in 
eighteen  months  and  had  influence  on  Catherine  II,  Frederick  the 
Great  and  Louis  XVI.  Burke  was  among  his  readers  but  learnt  still 
more  from  Montesquieu's  own  source  of  inspiration,  English 
institutions  as  they  actually  existed.  Burke  lays  down  as  his  first 
principle  that  Society  is  not  a  machine  but  an  organism — like  a  tree 
or  an  animal.  His  second  principle  is  Prudence — deliberation, 
sobriety  and  moderation.  His  third  principle  is  the  necessity  for  the 
long  view,  backward  and  forward.  He  utterly  rejects  the  idea  of 
majority  rule  and  the  will  of  the  people.  He  argues  that  our  fore- 
fathers and  descendants,  who  can  have  no  vote,  are  also  involved  and 
that  a  present  majority  has  no  right  to  undo  the  work  of  those  who 
are  dead  or  blight  the  future  of  those  still  to  be  born.  Society  is  a 
family,  not  a  collection  of  individuals,  and  the  family  includes  old  and 
young,  ancestors  and  descendants.  His  fourth  principle  is  that  the 
wisdom  of  our  ancestors  is  not  lightly  to  be  set  aside,  and  for  this 
reason;  that  their  institutions,  unlike  those  proposed  by  innovators, 
are  known  to  be  workable.  His  fifth  principle  is  liberty,  but  only  as 
connected  with  honesty,  justice  and  wisdom.  His  sixth  principle  is 
Balance.  Government,  he  insists,  should  display  a  just  balance  be- 
tween Monarchy,  Aristocracy,  the  Church  and  the  Commons. 
Monarchy  should  be  given  power  but  held  in  check  by  Aristocracy  as 
representing  stability  and  permanence.  The  Commons  should  rep- 
resent a  minority  of  the  people,  those  of  adult  age,  fair  education  and 
suflScient  leisure.  But  the  representatives  are  never  merely  to  reflect 
the  views  of  the  electorate.  Once  elected,  they  should  be  guided  by 
their  own  wisdom  and  experience. 

Burke  was,  in  all  this,  no  theorist.  He  describes  and  actively  defends 
the  institutions  he  knew  and  respected  and  the  principles  generally 
approved  among  his  colleagues  and  friends.  He  follows  Polybius  in 
praising  a  constitution  in  which  monarchy,  aristocracy  and  democ- 
racy are  blended.  He  follows  Cicero  in  regarding  as  so  blended  a 
constitution  in  which  aristocracy  in  fact  predominated,  and  which  he 
wanted  to  preserve.  He  does  not,  however,  praise  aristocracy  as  such. 


120  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

He  commends  rather  the  principles  upon  which  it  is  based  and  the 
chief  merit  for  which  an  aristocratic  rule  is  distinguished.  The 
principles  he  values  are  those  of  moderation,  proportion,  foresight 
and  respect  for  the  past.  The  merit  he  finds  in  an  aristocracy  is 
Freedom. 


CHAPTER    X 

Theocracy 


THE  Empires  of  the  Ancient  World  were  normally  ruled  by  a  king 
who  was  also  a  god.  Given  a  priesthood  to  support  his  divinity, 
we  have  thus  an  element  of  theocracy  in  the  oldest  kingdoms.  But 
theocracy,  rule  by  a  priest  or  priests,  is  only  one  form  of  monarchy 
or  aristocracy  and  not,  in  itself,  of  great  political  importance.  It 
would  hardly  be  possible  to  distinguish  between  the  religious  and 
political  functions  of  the  ancient  monarchies;  and  in  the  instances 
(as  among  the  Jews)  where  the  priests  had  taken  the  place  of  the  kings, 
then  political  and  religious  powers  were  at  least  co-extensive.  The 
people  were  all  of  the  one  religion  and  they  showed  no  particular 
desire  to  extend  its  benefits  to  anyone  else.  The  political  interest  of 
an  actively  religious  rule  begins  at  the  point  when  it  is  applied  to 
people  who  are  not  of  the  same  religion.  Nor  is  such  a  rule  applied  to 
others  except  in  the  name  of  a  missionary  religion;  a  religion  which 
enjoins  the  believer  to  make  converts  among  the  heathen.  Although, 
therefore,  the  earliest  monarchies  were,  in  some  measure,  theocratic, 
the  political  interest  of  theocracy  must  centre  mainly  on  the  mission- 
ary and  the  persecuting  religions.  And  of  these  the  first  was  Buddhism. 
Contemporary  with  the  Jewish  prophet  Isaiah,  contemporary  with 
Heraclitus,  contemporary  with  Confucius,  lived  in  India  Gautama, 
known  to  history  as  the  Buddha.  He  was  a  prince  who  lived  round 
about  500  B.C.,  not  far  from  Benares.  At  the  age  of  twenty-nine  he 
began  to  study  under  Brahman  teachers.  Having  reached  a  state  of 
enlightenment  (Buddha  means  the  Enlightened)  he  preached  at 
Benares,  as  did  the  other  mendicant  monks,  his  followers.  His 
doctrine  was  based  on  the  'four  noble  truths';  that  life  is  pain;  that 
the  pain  is  due  to  a  craving  for  life;  that  the  solution  is  to  discipline 
that  craving;  and  that  the  secret  of  that  discipline  is  to  escape  from 
the  wheel  of  life.  The  way  of  deliverance  includes  avoiding  the  three 
vices;  ignorance,  lust  and  hatred.  Most  of  this  was  perfectly  con- 
sistent with  Brahman  doctrines.  He  differed  mainly  from  the 
Brahmans,  perhaps,  in  failing  to  accept  their  ideas  of  caste.  He  was 
original,  moreover,  in  giving  up  fasting  and  penance  and  in  denying, 
in  effect,  the  existence  of  a  personal  god  or  an  individual  existence 
after  death.  His  Nirvana  or  ultimate  good  was  a  cessation,  merely,  of 
life  and  pain.  Doctrines  such  as  these  were  too  subtle  and  meta- 

121 


122  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

physical  even  for  his  own  disciples.  They  were  resisted  by  the  Brah- 
mans  and  appealed  only  to  a  few. 

After  Gautama's  death  (c.  482-472  B.C.)  his  followers  created  a 
new  religion  round  his  reputation  and  memory.  By  300  B.C.  they  were 
wrangling  about  doctrine  and  by  that  time  Buddha  (the  unbeliever) 
had  become  a  god.  This  new  religion  made  no  great  progress  in 
India  but,  absorbing  certain  Indian  ideas,  became  a  doctrine  of 
deliverance  with  Buddha  himself  in  the  role  of  Messiah.  In  this  form 
it  was  spread  by  active  missionaries  (not  by  force)  in  Burma,  Siam, 
Malaya,  China  and  Japan.  It  absorbed  many  local  gods  and  legends, 
becoming,  for  the  simpler  devotees,  a  religion  of  magic  and  wonder; 
remaining,  for  others,  an  austere  philosophy.  In  India  Buddhism 
reached  its  peak  under  the  Emperor  Asoka,  who  temporarily  con- 
verted Ceylon  to  that  faith  in  251  B.C.  It  now  forms  two  main 
branches;  the  one  in  Ceylon,  Burma  and  Siam;  the  other  in  China, 
Japan,  Java,  Sumatra  and  Tibet.  Buddhism  brought  with  it  every- 
where its  own  kind  of  learning  and  philosophy,  its  own  humanitari- 
anism  and  ethics,  its  own  ritual  and  art.  More  than  that,  the  Buddhist 
priests  were  educated  men  whose  knowledge  extended  to  medicine, 
textiles,  architecture,  bell-founding,  engraving  and  sculpture. 
Buddhist  temples  were  and  are  places  of  great  beauty.  Buddhist 
monasteries  were  and  are  centres  of  learning,  charity  and  refuge. 
Buddhism  was  once  almost  established  as  a  form  of  rule  in 
Japan. 

In  only  one  country  has  a  Buddhist  government  been  set  up  as  a 
theocracy,  and  that  is  Tibet;  a  country  in  which  ritual  and  prayer 
occupy  the  energies  of  quite  half  its  three  million  inhabitants.  Rule 
centres  on  the  Dalai  Lama,  reincarnation  of  his  predecessors  and 
Vice-Regent  for  the  Buddha.  He  is  assisted  by  a  Council  of  Ministers 
and  a  Parliament,  and  all  the  nobles  are  made  (or  were  made)  to 
accept  public  office.  Real  power  rests,  however,  in  the  400,000  monks 
who  are  or  were  collected  in  5,000  monasteries;  and  more  especially 
in  the  four  largest,  all  near  Lhasa.  Celibacy  on  this,  scale  is  hardly 
compatible,  one  would  think,  with  racial  survival.  As  a  form  of 
government,  nevertheless.  Buddhism  can  claim  (as  can  the  Papacy) 
the  merit  of  having  proved  exceptionally  stable. 

Although  Buddhism  is  an  example,  and  perhaps  the  first  example, 
of  a  missionary  religion,  it  has  not  been  generally  associated  with 
religious  persecution.  To  this  rule,  however,  there  is  one  big  excep- 
tion. When  the  Emperor  Asoka,  third  of  the  Mauryan  dynasty, 
succeeded  to  the  throne  in  about  268  B.C.,  he  proclaimed  himself  a 
Buddhist  and  Buddhism  the  state  religion.  More  than  that,  he  used 
the  machinery  of  government  to  disseminate  its  teachings.  For 
practical  purposes,  these  teachings,  in  so  far  as  they  affected  the 


THEOCRACY  123 

subject,  were  summarised  in  what  is  called  the  Second  Minor  Rock 
Edict,  which  reads  as  follows: — 
Thus  saith  His  Majesty: 

Father  and  mother  must  be  obeyed;  similarly,  respect  for  living 
creatures  must  be  enforced;  truth  must  be  spoken.  These  are  the 
virtues  of  the  Law  of  Piety  which  must  be  practised.  Similarly,  the 
teacher  must  be  reverenced  by  the  pupil,  and  proper  courtesy  must  be 
shown  to  relations. 

This  is  the  ancient  standard  of  piety — this  leads  to  length  of  days,  and 
according  to  this  men  must  act.^ 

As  these  precepts  were  acceptable,  for  the  most  part,  to  Asoka's 
subjects  and  as  he  avowed  a  general  toleration  in  other  respects,  this 
Edict  might  seem  a  harmless  injunction  to  observe  what  were  in  fact 
established  customs.  But  'respect  for  living  creatures'  meant  a  partial 
enforcement  of  vegetarianism  as  from  243  B.C. 

.  .  .  Many  kinds  of  animals  were  absolutely  protected  from  slaughter 
in  any  circumstances;  and  the  slaying  of  animals  commonly  used  for 
food  by  the  flesh-eating  population,  although  not  totally  prohibited, 
was  hedged  round  by  severe  restrictions.  On  fifty-six  specified  days  in 
the  year,  killing  under  any  pretext  was  categorically  forbidden;  and  in 
many  ways  the  liberty  of  the  subject  was  very  seriously  contracted. 
While  Asoka  lived,  these  regulations  were,  no  doubt,  strictly  enforced 
by  the  special  officers  appointed  for  the  purpose;  and  it  is  not  unlikely 
that  deliberate  breach  of  the  more  important  regulations  was  visited 
with  the  capital  penalty,  as  it  was  later  in  the  days  of  Harsha.'^ 
.  .  .  Sacrifices  involving  the  death  of  a  victim,  which  are  absolutely 
indispensable  for  the  correct  worship  of  some  of  the  gods,  were 
categorically  prohibited,  at  least  at  the  capital,  from  an  early  period 
in  the  reign.  .  .  .  Men  might  believe  what  they  liked,  but  must  do  as 
they  were  told.^ 

A  respect  for  life  so  fanatical  as  to  involve  capital  punishment 
would  seem  somewhat  remote  from  the  philosophical  ideas  of 
Gautama  himself.  But  the  transformation  of  a  Founder's  ethical 
teaching  into  an  elaborate  and  rigid  ritual  is  the  normal  way  in  which 
religions  develop.  In  this  instance  Asoka,  who  conquered  Kalinga 
with  (it  is  said)  enormous  bloodshed,  used  his  powers  to  the  utmost 
in  support  of  Buddhism. 

.  .  .  But  the  millenium  had  not  arrived  and  human  nature  was  not 
changed  by  the  affirmation  of  great  spiritual  truths.  The  miracle  which 
Asoka  expected  by  his  proclamations  of  the  Dharma  did  not  come  to 
pass;  and  the  spiritual  insight  which  he  so  earnestly  desired  to  give  to 

'  The  early  History  of  India  from  600  B.C.  to  the  Muhammadan  Conquest.  Vincent  A. 
Smith.  3rd  ed.  Oxford,  1914.  p.  178. 
^  Vincent  A.  Smith,  op.  cit.  p.  177. 
^  Ibid.  p.  179. 


124  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

all  his  subjects  is  less  evident  in  early  Buddhist  records  than  extrava- 
gant faith  in  the  wonder-working  powers  of  the  bodily  relics  of  the 
Saints  who  taught  the  Good  Law.^ 

If  Asoka's  ideas  were  remote  from  those  of  Gautama,  the  ideas  of 
the  common  folk  in  India  were  still  more  remote  from  those  of  Asoka. 

The  development  of  the  theocracy  of  Byzantium  and  Rome  can  be 
traced  back  not  merely  to  the  teachings  of  Christ  but  to  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  Roman  Empire.  Politically,  the  story  is  simple  in  outline. 
The  Roman  Republic  had  a  military  success  with  which  its  political 
organization  was  quite  unable  to  cope.  The  Roman  constitution  was 
basically  that  of  a  Greek  colony.  To  use  it  for  governing  Italy  was  to 
stretch  the  system  to  breaking  point.  To  use  it  for  governing  the 
known  world  was  impossible.  Republican  Rome  had  no  executive 
body  smaller  than  the  Senate,  no  permanent  officials,  no  specialists 
in  diplomacy  or  finance.  In  so  far  as  the  existence  of  democratic 
assemblies  meant  inviting  the  unemployed  of  Rome  to  advise  on  the 
governance  of  an  Empire,  the  system  was  merely  absurd.  For  the 
most  successful  general  to  make  himself  ruler  was  more  or  less 
inevitable.  Julius  Caesar,  the  first  Commander-in-Chief  to  assume 
political  control,  annexed  Egypt  and  made  it  part  of  the  Empire. 
His  successor,  Augustus,  (warned  by  Julius  Caesar's  fate),  moved 
cautiously,  assuming  only  Consular  powers  and  the  title  of 'Princeps' 
or  first  citizen.  He  avoided  anything  like  royalty.  But,  whereas 
Augustus  was  only  'Princeps'  in  Rome  and  Tmperator'  in  the 
Provinces,  he  was  Pharaoh  in  Egypt,  successor  to  the  Hellenistic 
monarchy  of  the  Ptolemies  and  seated  upon  the  world's  most  ancient 
throne.  In  Egyptian  monuments  the  Roman  Emperors  were  to  appear 
with  inscriptions  reading  'the  Everliving,  the  Beloved  of  Isis,  the 
Beloved  of  Phtha'.^ 

The  tremendous  inheritance  of  Egypt  brought  the  Roman  Emperors 
not  only  deity  but  an  example  of  efficient  administration  based  upon 
a  strict  separation  of  the  military  and  civil  powers.  It  was  not  until  the 
reign  of  Domitian  that  the  living  Emperor  was  called  'Deus'.  It  was 
Aurelian,  however,  who  proclaimed  himself  the  representative  of  the 
Sun  God,  to  resist  whom  henceforth  would  be  impious  as  well  as 
criminal.  The  imperial  bureaucracy  grew  up  under  Claudius  (a.d. 
41-54)  and  the  Senate  lost  to  it  the  last  of  its  powers  in  271.  Before 
that,  under  Hadrian  (a.d.  117-138)  there  had  been  established  the 
imperial  council  of  state,  the  imperial  secretariat  and  the  imperial 
system  of  postal  communication.  What  is  most  significant  however, 
about  his  reign  is  that  he  spent  half  his  time  away  from  Rome — 

'  The  History  of  Aryan  Rule  in  India.  E.  B.  Havcll.  London,  1918.  p.  102. 
-  The  Age  of  Constantine  the  Great.  Jacob  Burckhardt.  Trans,  by  M.  Hadas.  London, 
1949. 


THEOCRACY  125 

in  Spain,  Syria,  Britain  and  Africa — being  away  for  five  or  six  years 
at  a  stretch.  This  shows  that  the  imperial  administration  could  run, 
and  did  run  for  years,  in  the  Emperor's  absence.  It  was  latterly 
copied  less  from  Egypt  than  from  the  Sassanian  administration  in 
Persia;  a  ministerial  system  of  the  typically  Oriental  type.  The  Empire 
was  governed  by  what  came  to  be  called  the  Sacred  Consistory, 
comprising  the  heads  of  departments  and  the  Chief  Secretary  of 
State.  Beneath  it,  the  Imperial  Secretariat  included  six  main 
branches.  The  other  departments  were  those  of  the  Interior, 
Finance,  Crown  Property,  the  Imperial  Household,  Justice,  War, 
Transport  and  Police.  With  the  Secretariat,  the  total  is  nine,  the 
exact  number  of  the  ministries  under  the  Ts'in  Dynasty  in  China.  The 
ministries  are  also  practically  the  same  but  with  the  one  major 
diflFerence  that  the  Chinese  had  no  police,  the  Prefect  of  the  City's 
place  being  taken,  with  them,  by  a  Minister  for  Economic  Affairs.^ 

The  Roman  fusion  of  Soldier,  Administrator  and  Lawyer  had 
broken  up.  And  if  it  is  true  that  the  soldier,  in  becoming  more  purely 
a  soldier,  became  far  less  of  a  statesman,  it  is  also  true  that  the 
administrator  became  more  efficient  in  becoming  more  specialised.  It 
is  even  truer  that  the  lawyer  became  more  efficient  when  relieved  of  all 
but  legal  duties.  The  great  Roman  jurists  applied  to  the  Empire  the 
customs  of  many  different  peoples,  compared  with  each  other  in  the 
light  of  Stoic  philosophy,  expounded  with  Greek  intellectual  subtlety 
and  enforced  with  Roman  strictness.  It  was  the  beginning  of  scientific 
jurisprudence,  marked  by  the  Perpetual  Edict  of  Hadrian  and  crowned 
long  afterwards  by  the  Institutes  of  Justinian.  The  result  of  this  new 
emphasis  on  law  would  eventually  be  the  doctrine  that  the  Emperor 
himself  was  subject  to  law.  This,  however,  was  long  after  the  Emperor 
Constantine  shifted  his  capital  to  the  new  city  he  had  built  on  the 
Bosphorus,  on  the  site  of  the  older  Greek  Colony  of  Byzantium. 
The  court  so  transplanted  became  more  openly  oriental  and  the 
change  in  itself  foreshadowed  the  division  of  the  Empire  on  the  death 
of  Theodosius  in  395.  The  western  Empire  collapsed  in  410  but  that 
in  the  East  survived  and  offers  us  another  example  of  a  State  influ- 
enced and  impelled  by  a  missionary  religion.  This  religion  was 
Christianity. 

So  far  as  we  know,  Christ  himself  had  no  political  ideas  at  all 
except  in  so  far  as  he  explicity  accepted  Roman  rule  and  would  take 
no  part  in  any  movement  for  its  overthrow.  He  preached  a  doctrine 
not  wholly  unlike  that  of  Buddhism  but  among  a  people  and  in  a 
setting  of  a  totally  different  kind.  His  was  the  Semitic  world  of  the 
Middle  East, 

•  See  Roman  Political  Institutions.  L.  P.  Homo.  p.  269.  Legacv  of  the  Ancient  World. 
W.  G.  de  Burgh.  London,  1947.  p.  25.3  and  Cambridge  Ancient  History.  Vol.  XI.  p.  432. 


126  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

Semites  had  no  half  tones  in  their  register  of  vision.  They  were  a 
people  of  primary  colours,  or  rather  of  black  and  white,  who  saw  the 
world  always  in  contrast  .  .  .  their  thoughts  were  at  ease  only  in 
extremes.  They  inhabited  superlatives  by  choice  .  .  .  their  convictions 
were  by  instinct,  their  activities  intuitional.  Their  largest  manufacture 
was  of  creeds;  almost  they  were  monopolists  of  revealed  religions. 
Three  of  these  efforts  .  .  .  endured.  These  were  Semitic  successes. 
Their  failures  they  kept  to  themselves.  The  fringes  of  the  desert  were 
strewn  with  broken  faiths.  The  common  base  of  all  the  Semitic 
creeds,  winners  or  losers,  was  the  ever-present  idea  of  world  worth- 
lessness.  .  .  .  The  Semites  hovered  between  lust  and  self-denial.  They 
were  incorrigible  children  of  the  idea,  feckless  and  colour  blind,  to 
whom  body  and  spirit  were  for  ever  and  inevitably  opposed.^ 

If  the  ideas  of  Christ  himself  were,  like  those  of  Gautama,  ethical 
and  abstract,  his  followers  had  much  the  same  background  as  earlier 
believers  in  Judaism  and  later  believers  in  Islam.  Of  the  revealed 
religions  the  three  of  most  permanent  political  effect  came  from  the 
fringes  of  the  same  desert  and  were  doomed  to  mutual  hostility  not 
because  they  are  so  different  but  because  they  are  so  alike.  Christ's 
followers,  like  Gautama's,  interpreted  his  teachings  in  the  light  of 
their  own  preconceived  ideas.  They  had  the  mental  outlook,  when 
outside  Palestine,  of  an  unpopular  minority  which  founded  its  unity  on 
a  book.  From  that  sacred  scripture  they  derived  an  idea  of  kingship 
but  with  divine  sanction  conferred  by  anointment  at  the  hands  of  a 
prophet.  They  were  God's  Chosen  People  and,  convinced  that  the 
divine  plan  would  include  their  redemption  and  satisfy  their  hatred. 
Beneath  a  veneer  of  Hellenistic  culture,  they  had  all  the  Semitic 
intolerance.  But  the  early  Christians  were  also  influenced  by  the 
destruction  of  Jerusalem,  temple  and  all,  in  a.d.  70,  which 
strengthened  in  them  that  hatred  of  the  Romans  which  is  expressed  in 
Revelation.  They  were  later  influenced  by  intermittent  persecution, 
both  by  the  Jews  and  by  the  Romans;  the  former  regarding  them  as 
deviationists  and  the  latter  as  abstainers  from  formal  Emperor- 
worship. 

The  essentials  of  Christian  teaching,  from  the  political  point  of 
view,  are  to  be  found  in  the  doctrines  concerning  the  fatherhood  of 
God  and  the  future  life.  A  belief  that  God  is  father  of  all  makes  all 
human  beings  brothers  and  sisters  and  therefore  (more  or  less)  equal 
in  value  at  least  to  God.  Logically  pursued,  the  doctrine  abolishes  all 
inherited  rank  or  inherited  slavery.  Emphasis  on  the  future  life  was 
not  wholly  new  in  itself  but  was  new  at  least  to  many  Christian 
converts.  It  involves  the  belief  that  the  present  life  is  merely  a  training 
(and  elimination)  of  candidates  for  heaven.  By  Christian  teaching  the 
poorest  and  worst-treated  have  quite  possibly  the  best  chance  of 

'  The  Seven  Pillars  of  Wisdom.  T.  E.  Lawrence.  London,  1937.  pp.  40-42. 


THEOCRACY  127 

redemption,  so  that  present  inequalities  may  be  made  good  hereafter. 
One  might  add  that  the  Christian  ethical  teaching,  with  its  insistence 
upon  a  high  moral  standard  in  honesty,  kindness,  abstinence  and  self- 
sacrifice,  might  mean  that  a  Christian  State  (were  one  established) 
would  have  a  moral  purpose  going  far  beyond  the  functions  of  any 
previous  State.  In  the  meanwhile,  there  was  nothing  in  Christianity  to 
justify  armed  revolt  against  even  a  pagan  ruler;  still  less  against  a 
ruler  even  nominally  a  Christian.  It  was,  however,  found  possible  to 
justify  resistance  to  heresy;  to  doctrines,  that  is  to  say,  which  would 
imperil  the  souls  of  those  induced  to  believe  in  them.  In  Christianity 
the  priesthood  had  been  important  from  the  beginning,  having  special 
power  to  convey  the  forgiveness  of  sins.  As  Christ  had  never  married 
and  as  his  closest  followers  had  followed  his  example  in  this,  all 
sexual  relationships  were  regarded  as  more  or  less  sinful  and  a  con- 
cession, at  best,  to  human  weakness.  So  the  Church's  officers,  at 
least,  had  to  be  celibate  and  there  was,  from  the  beginning,  a  definite 
place  in  the  Church  for  those  who  forsook  all  human  relationships 
and  possessions,  devoting  themselves  to  contemplation  and  prayer. 
A  final  Christian  characteristic  was  the  desire  to  convert  others  for 
their  own  good  and  to  save  them  from  destruction  or  eternal  torment. 
Although  wholly  benevolent  in  origin,  this  could  lead  in  the  end  to 
persecution.  It  was  something  hitherto  almost  unknown. 

Jewish  opposition  led  the  Christians  to  seek  for  converts  outside 
their  own  racial  group,  and  their  missionary  efforts  had  a  great 
measure  of  success.  Romans  of  the  more  conservative  type  attributed 
the  decline  of  their  Empire  to  subversive  Christian  propaganda.  It 
was  in  fact  the  other  way  about.  In  an  age  of  growing  uncertainty  and 
confusion  people  turned  to  a  revealed  religion,  showing  a  new 
interest  in  the  next  world  as  they  came  to  expect  less  in  this.  Nor  was 
Christianity  the  only  religion  to  benefit  from  this  growing  insecurity. 
No  other  group,  however,  held  such  a  typically  Indian  belief  with 
such  Arab  intensity.  Christians  were  peculiarly  non-political  believing 
as  they  did  in  an  early  end  of  the  world  with  the  second  coming  of 
Christ;  an  expectation  which  lingered,  in  fact,  until  a.d.  1001.  In  the 
meanwhile,  however,  their  world,  in  the  west,  did  end.  The  sack  of 
Rome  by  Alaric  in  410  had  a  stunning  effect  upon  all  to  whom  the 
Empire  had  seemed  eternal.  The  catastrophe — repeated  in  455 — was 
almost  unthinkable.  The  western  Empire  crumbled  and  the  Bishop  of 
Rome,  remaining  at  his  post  after  the  collapse,  found  himself  the  heir 
to  its  prestige  and  to  some  indeed  of  its  political  power  and  territory. 
Rome  was  to  be  the  centre,  henceforth,  of  a  new  theocracy  which 
still  exists.  We  have  seen  already  (pp.  75-76)  some  of  the  arguments  used 
to  maintain  its  supremacy  against  any  revival  of  the  secular  power. 
In  the  Eastern  Empire,  centred  on  Constantinople,  the  story  was 


128  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

entirely  different.  Rome  here  survived  but  in  an  orientalised  form. 
Gibbon  describes  with  eloquence  how  oriental,  how  Persian,  it  had  in 
fact  become. 

The  manly  pride  of  the  Romans,  content  with  substantial  power, 
had  left  to  the  vanity  of  the  east  the  forms  and  ceremonies  of  osten- 
tatious greatness.  But  when  they  lost  even  the  semblance  of  those 
virtues  which  were  derived  from  their  ancient  freedom,  the  simplicity 
of  Roman  manners  was  insensibly  corrupted  by  the  stately  affectation 
of  the  courts  of  Asia.  The  distinctions  of  personal  merit  and  influence, 
so  conspicuous  in  a  republic,  so  feeble  and  obscure  under  a  monarchy, 
were  abolished  by  the  despotism  of  the  emperors,  who  substituted  in 
their  room  a  severe  subordination  of  rank  and  office,  from  the  titled 
slaves  who  were  seated  on  the  steps  of  the  throne  to  the  meanest 
instruments  of  arbitrary  power.  The  multitude  of  abject  dependants 
was  interested  in  the  support  of  the  actual  government,  from  the  dread 
of  a  revolution,  which  might  at  once  confound  their  hopes,  and  inter- 
cept the  reward  of  their  services.  In  this  divine  hierarchy  (for  such  it  is 
frequently  styled),  every  rank  was  marked  with  the  most  scrupulous 
exactness,  and  its  dignity  was  displayed  in  a  variety  of  trifling  and 
solemn  ceremonies,  which  it  was  a  study  to  learn,  and  a  sacrilege  to 
neglect.  The  purity  of  the  Latin  language  was  debased,  by  adopting, 
in  the  intercourse  of  pride  and  flattery,  a  profusion  of  epithets,  which 
Tully  would  have  scarcely  understood,  and  which  Augustus  would 
have  rejected  with  indignation.  The  principal  officers  of  the  empire 
were  saluted,  even  by  the  sovereign  himself,  by  the  deceitful  titles  of 
your  Sincerity,  your  Gravity,  your  Excellency,  your  Eminency,  your 
sublime  and  wonderful  Magnitude,  your  illustrious  and  magnificent 
Highness.^ 

However  nauseating  this  ceremony  might  be  to  a  good  republican, 
the  Byzantine  Empire  had  at  least  the  merit  of  success.  And  there  can 
be  no  doubt  that  the  stability  of  the  Eastern  Empire  was  largely  due 
to  its  alliance  with  Christianity.  It  was  Constantine  who  recognised 
in  this  widespread  religion  a  stabilising  force  which  he  could  use  for 
political  ends.  He  used  Christianity  even  before  he  professed  it.^  It 
was  he  who,  at  the  Council  of  Nicaea,  managed,  as  chairman,  to 
induce  the  bishops  to  agree  on  the  Nicene  Creed.  At  this  period 
Constantine  retained  all  the  prestige  of  the  God-Emperor.  He  was 
approached  with  a  ritual  of  prostration  and  it  was  a  privilege  to 
approach  him  at  all.^  It  was  only  on  his  deathbed  in  337  that  Con- 
stantine was  actually  baptised.  And  his  successors.  Christian  in  their 
turn,  lost  little  of  his  sanctified  authority. 

'  The  History  of  the  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire.  Edward  Gibbon.  London, 
1888.  Vol.  II.  pp.  197-9. 

■  Western  Political  Thought.  John  Bowie.  London,  1947.  p.  125.  See  also  Byzantine 
Civilisation.  Steven  Runciman.  London,  1933.  p.  79. 

'  Byzantium,  an  Introduction  to  East  Roman  Civilization.  Norman  H.  Baynes  and  H. 
Baynes  and  H.  St.  L.  B.  Moss  (editors).  Oxford,  1948. 


THEOCRACY  129 

It  might  be  thought  that  the  Eastern  Empire  presented,  at  this 
period,  a  typical  monarchy  of  the  type  familiar  in  Egypt,  Persia  or 
China.  But  there  was  this  significant  difference  that  Christianity  is  a 
missionary  religion  and  that  Byzantine  religion,  as  now  established, 
was  intolerant  in  a  new  way.  The  tradition  of  Roman  Law  was 
maintained  to  a  large  extent  but  the  aim  of  government  was  no  longer 
secular.  The  State  was  responsible  for  morals,  conduct,  teaching  and 
belief.  The  administration  in  later  Byzantium  was  paternal  in  the 
extreme  and  affected  daily  life  to  a  degree  hardly  equalled  or  exceeded 
until  the  present  day.  We  hear  of  the  tenth  century  Prefect  of  Con- 
stantinople fixing  prices,  wages  and  hours  and  licensing  the  opening 
of  new  shops.  Migration  and  travel  was  discouraged,  and  travellers 
had  to  have  passports.  Work  had  to  be  found  for  the  unemployed. 
The  sabbath  had  to  be  duly  observed  and  the  good  citizen  had  to  be 
orthodox.  As  already  discovered  in  Buddhist  India  of  Asoka's  time, 
the  government  which  adopts  or  absorbs  the  doctrines  of  a  missionary 
religion  must  assume  functions  far  in  excess  of  those  ordinarily 
assumed.  The  essence  of  religious  persecution  lies  in  government 
swayed  by  religious  beliefs  which  not  all  those  governed  may  share. 
Under  a  theocracy  religious  persecution  is  all  but  inevitable. 

Like  Christianity,  Islam  derives  from  the  Semitic  peoples  of  the 
desert.  Like  Christianity  again,  it  has  been  modified  by  the  peoples 
and  civilisations  which  its  adherents  have  conquered  or  absorbed.  It 
sprang  up  among  the  nomad  tribes  of  Arabia,  living  midway  between 
a  declining  Roman  Empire  and  a  dechning  empire  of  Persia.  These 
desert  people  have  made  periodic  invasions  of  the  Fertile  Crescent, 
as  it  has  been  called,  which  lies  temptingly  to  the  northward  of  their 
poor,  barren  land.  The  rise  of  Islam  represents  just  such  another 
invasion  but  informed  with  a  different  purpose.  Until  the  time  of 
Muhammad,  who  was  born  about  a.d.  570,  each  Arab  tribe  had 
possessed  its  own  tribal  god  (the  Jews'  Jahweh  was  one  of  them)  with 
a  worship  involving  sacrifice,  prayer,  omens,  images  and  'Jinns'  or 
demons.  Mecca  was  a  place  of  pilgrimage  because  of  its  'caaba'  or 
black  stone  and  'Allah'  or  'Lord'  was  the  title  any  Arab  would  give 
to  any  god.^  Being  influenced  by  more  civilised  peoples  near  them,  the 
Arabs  knew  something  of  Judaism  and  Christianity. 

Muhammad  was  born  at  Mecca,  married  at  the  age  of  25  and 
began,  some  years  later,  to  see  visions  and  hear  voices.  An  angel 
appeared  to  him  when  he  was  aged  forty  and  again  two  or  three  years 
later.  Then  he  had  repeated  revelations  and  some  people  thought  him 
mad.  He  preached  the  need  for  submission  (Islam)  to  the  one  god 
(Allah),  together  with  prayer,  abstinence  and  alms-giving.  Persecuted 
for  his  views,  he  fled  with  his  followers  to  Medina  in  622  (the  Hegira) 

'  The  Arabs  in  History.  Bernard  Lewis.  London,  1950.  Chap.  1. 


130  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

and  there  became  all-powerful.  He  captured  Mecca  in  a.d.  630  and 
made  it  the  capital  of  Islam.  Soon  afterwards,  in  632,  he  died,  leaving 
the  Koran  for  his  followers'  guidance.  As  the  Western  Roman  Empire 
had  virtually  ceased  to  exist  in  476,  and  as  Heraclius  defeated  the 
Persians  at  Nineveh  in  627,  there  was  a  political  vacuum  to  the  east 
and  west  of  Arabia.  On  the  other  hand,  Byzantium  remained  strong. 
The  Arab  invasion  split,  as  it  were,  on  the  rock  of  Constantinople  and 
flowed  eastwards  and  westwards,  its  furthest  tide  reaching  China  in 
one  direction  and  France  in  the  other.  The  Arabs  could  have  achieved 
nothing  on  this  scale  without  a  powerful  creed.  For  Muhammad, 
remember,  with  his  personality  and  his  gifts  as  a  ruler,  was  dead 
before  this  great  movement  had  even  begun.  It  was  his  ideas  that 
went  so  far  and  so  fast,  sometimes  even  outstripping  his  followers 
themselves,  well  mounted  as  they  were. 

Islam  is  summarised  in  one  basic  profession  of  faith.  There  is  no 
God  but  Allah  and  Muhammad  is  the  prophet  of  Allah'.  There  is  no 
room  here  for  tolerance.  The  followers  of  the  prophet  belonged  to  a 
brotherhood  of  the  faithful,  superseding  all  blood-ties.  They  were  to 
be  distinguished  by  the  pious  observances  of  prayer  (facing  Mecca), 
by  attendance  at  the  Mosque,  by  keeping  Friday  as  the  'Sabbath',  by 
complete  abstinence  from  wine,  by  fasting  during  Ramadan  and  by 
the  pilgrimage  to  Mecca.  They  were  allowed  to  be  polygamous,  with 
up  to  four  wives  at  a  time — the  women  to  go  veiled.  Followers  of  the 
prophet  were  also  bound  to  fight  the  infidel  and  make  Islam  prevail 
everywhere,  the  fallen  in  this  war  being  sure  of  paradise  and  the  non- 
combatants  bound  at  least  to  help  by  contributing  towards  the  cost 
of  the  war.  Muslims  revealed,  in  particular,  a  growing  hostility  against 
Judaism  and  Christianity;  the  former  because  the  Jews  had  been 
opponents  of  the  prophet,  the  latter  because  the  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity  was  not  strictly  monotheistic. 

Of  the  people  of  Islam  it  has  been  said: — 

This  community  is  diflFerent  from  any  other:  it  is  the  chosen,  the 
holy  people,  to  whom  is  entrusted  the  furtherance  of  good  and  the 
repression  of  evil;  it  is  the  only  seat  of  justice  and  faith  upon  earth, 
the  sole  witness  for  God  among  the  nations,  just  as  the  Prophet  had 
been  God's  witness  among  the  Arabs. ^ 

The  doctrine,  therefore,  of  human  equality  has  no  support  from  the 
orthodox  Muslim.  As  against  that,  Muslims  claim  to  be  politically 
equal  among  themselves. 

As  to  the  Muslim  theory  of  government,  it  is  embodied  in  two  verses 
of  the  Quran  'Consult  with  your  companions  in  conduct  of  affairs' 
(3  ;  159)  'The  way  of  the  Companions  of  the  Prophet  to  govern 

'  The  Legacy  of  Islam.  Ed.  by  Sir  Thomas  Arnold.  Oxford,  1931.  p.  284. 


THEOCRACY  131 

their  affairs  is  by  counsel'  (42  :  38).  These  verses  lay  down  for  all 
time  the  guiding  principle  of  government.  .  .  . 

As  to  the  political  ideal  of  Islam,  one  could  quote  instances  from 
Islamic  history  to  show  the  absolute  equality  of  all  men  in  Islam,  the 
head  of  the  State,  the  Caliph,  not  excepted.  This  conception  of  justice 
which  differentiates  between  the  subject  and  the  ruler  is  repugnant  to 
the  Muslim.  To  the  Quran  both  the  servant  and  the  master,  the  slave 
and  the  king,  have  equal  legal  status.  .  .  .^ 

Failing  more  explicit  guidance  from  the  Koran,  the  Muslim  must 
turn  for  political  advice  to  Islamic  history  and  tradition.  This  would 
be  more  helpful  if  the  Arabs  had  recorded  their  history  more 
promptly.-  Traditions  they  have,  nevertheless,  in  plenty,  and  these 
emphasise  the  duty  of  obedience  to  the  ruler. 

'The  Apostle  of  God  said:  after  me  will  come  rulers;  render  them 
your  obedience  ...  if  they  are  righteous  and  rule  you  well,  they  shall 
have  their  reward;  but  if  they  do  evil  and  rule  you  ill,  then  punishment 
will  fall  upon  them  and  you  will  be  quit  of  it.  .  .  .'^ 

We  have,  therefore,  in  Islam,  two  somewhat  conflicting  ideas;  the 
Arab  concept  of  equality  in  brotherhood  and  an  added  idea  of 
obedience  to  a  ruler;  and  indeed  to  any  ruler.  Equality  was  difficult  to 
sustain,  in  any  case,  because  Muhammad  left  a  widow,  daughters  and 
uncles,  all  of  whom  were  bound  to  be  privileged;  and  he  also  left 
friends  who  were  in  the  best  position  to  know  what  he  thought  or 
what,  in  given  circumstances,  he  might  have  done.  As  for  the  auth- 
ority of  the  ruler,  that  was  bound  to  grow  among  an  aggressive  people, 
faced  with  problems  of  war,  conquest,  empire  and  administration. 
And  Muhammad  had  left  them,  in  lieu  of  advice,  his  own  example; 
and  his  powers  seem  to  have  been  pretty  absolute.  What  he  failed  to 
leave  was  an  appointed  successor,  an  heir,  or  any  directions  as  to  how 
his  successor  should  be  appointed;  if  indeed  there  was  to  be  a 
successor  at  all. 

When  Muhammad  died  there  were  four  parties  of  Muslims:  the 
Early  Believers  (who  had  taken  part  in  the  Hegira);  the  Believers  of 
Medina  (who  had  invited  him  there);  the  converts  of  Mecca  (con- 
verted by  force  after  the  capture),  headed  by  the  aristocratic  family  of 
the  Umayyad;  and  a  party  of  mixed  origin  which  expected  God  to 
appoint  the  Prophet's  successor.*  After  much  disagreement,  Abu 
Bakr  (the  Prophet's  father-in-law)  was  elected,  to  be  followed  by 

'  Muhaminad  'A  Mercv  to  all  the  Nations'.  Al.  Haji  Qassim  Ali  Jairazbhoy.  London 
1934.  p.  239. 

'  The  Law  of  War  and  Peace  in  Islam.  A  Study  in  Muslim  International  Law.  Majid 
Khadduri.  London,  1940. 

"  The  Caliphate.  Sir  Thomas  W.  Arnold.  Oxford,  1924.  pp.  48-50. 

'  Development  of  Muslim  Theology,  Jurisprudence  and  Constitutional  Theory.  Duncan 
B.  Macdonald.  London,  1903.  (Chapters  I  and  11). 


132  THE     K  VOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

Umar  in  634.  Both  these  belonged  to  the  party  of  the  Early  Believers, 
but  when  Umar  died  in  644,  the  Umayya  clan  secured  the  election  of 
Uthman  (son-in-law  of  the  Prophet),  who  was  assassinated  in  655  by  a 
son  of  Abu  Bakr.  The  fourth  or  legitimist  party  then  gained  the 
choice  of  Ali,  another  son-in-law  of  the  Prophet.  He  was  supplanted 
by  the  Umayyads,  who  ruled,  more  or  less,  until  750;  one  branch, 
indeed,  in  Spain,  surviving  until  929  or  later.  In  Arabia  itself  the 
Khalifate  virtually  ended  with  the  Mongol  conquest  of  656  when  the 
Abbasids  fell.  The  Ottoman  Sultans  claimed  to  be  Khalifa  as  from 
1538  but  with  little  real  authority  over  any  other  Muslim  rulers. 
Orthodoxy  has  been  upheld  not  so  much  by  the  Sultans  as  by  the 
Sharif  families  of  Mecca. 

Muslim  orthodoxy  is  largely  a  matter  of  Muslim  law.  Muhammad 
had  ruled  Medina  and,  later,  Mecca,  acting  as  judge,  using  local 
customary  law  when  he  thought  good,  using  his  own  judgment  (or 
revelation)  when  that  seemed  to  him  better.  In  place,  therefore,  of  a 
legal  code,  he  left  his  decisions  in  the  accidental  sequence  of  their 
delivery.  Decisions  made  to  settle  squabbles  among  the  Medina 
townsfolk  are  found  to  cover  subjects  as  various  as  prayer,  ritual 
ablution,  poor-rates,  fasting,  pilgrimage,  business  transactions, 
inheritance,  marriage,  divorce,  intoxicants,  the  holy  war,  hunting, 
racing,  vows  and  slavery.  The  result  is  an  elaborate  but  unsystematic 
system  of  conduct. 

How,  indeed,  can  we  meet  a  legal  code  which  knows  no  destinction 
of  personal  or  public,  of  civil  or  criminal  law;  which  prescribes  and 
describes  the  use  of  the  toothpick  and  decides  when  a  wedding 
invitation  may  be  declined,  which  enters  into  the  minutest  and  most 
unsavoury  details  of  family  life  and  lays  down  rules  of  religious  retreat ! 
Is  it  by  some  subtle  connection  of  thought  that  the  chapter  on  oaths 
and  vows  follows  immediately  that  on  horse-racing,  and  a  section  on 
the  building  line  on  a  street  is  inserted  in  a  chapter  on  bankruptcy  and 
composition?  One  thing,  at  least,  is  abundantly  clear.  Muslim  law,  in 
the  most  absolute  sense,  fits  the  old  definition,  and  is  the  science  of  all 
things,  human  and  divine.  ...  It  takes  all  duty  for  its  portion  and 
defines  all  action  in  terms  of  duty.  Nothing  can  escape  the  narrow 
meshes  of  its  net.  One  of  the  greatest  legists  of  Islam  never  ate  a 
watermelon  because  he  could  not  find  that  the  usage  of  the  Prophet 
had  laid  down  and  sanctioned  a  canonical  method  of  doing  so.^ 

The  Caliphate  in  its  original  form,  provided  with  the  prophet's 
detailed  guidance,  was  no  ordinary  monarchy  or  priesthood.  It 
might,  in  different  circumstances,  have  become  a  theocracy  com- 
parable to  that  of  Rome.  It  did  not,  however,  last  long  enough  for 
that. 

'  The  Development  of  Muslim  Theology,  Jurisprudence  and  Constitutional  Theory. 
D.  B.  Macdonald.  London,  1903.  pp.  66-67  and  Appendix  I,  pp.  351-357. 


THEOCRACY  133 

In  point  of  fact,  the  caliphate  as  it  is  fondly  imagined  by  jurists 
never  had  a  real  existence  .  .  .  hardly  had  the  first  Muslim  generation 
died  away  when  the  practical  needs  of  a  great  polity,  and  the  unruly 
temper  of  the  Arabs,  combined  to  transform  the  caliphate  first  into  a 
personal  rule  under  the  Umayyads;  then,  under  the  Abbasids,  into  a 
monarchy  on  the  Persian  pattern,  whose  apparent  orthodoxy  but  ill- 
concealed  the  despotism,  the  violence,  and  the  administrative  mis- 
management which  were  pushing  the  empire  to  its  ruin.^ 

But  if  the  Muslim  Empire  was  short-lived  it  survived  at  least  long 
enough  to  demonstrate  its  religious  intolerance  in  Persia,  Syria, 
Egypt  and  Spain.  And  it  differed  from  Christian  intolerance  in  the 
one  important  respect,  that  conversion  was  not  its  object.  In  con- 
quered territories  the  unbelievers  were  left  in  possession  of  their 
lands  but  specially  taxed.  They  were  destined  for  hell-fire  as  infidels 
but  extensive  conversion  to  the  true  faith  would  have  been  financially 
undesirable.  The  Muslim  imposed  social  and  legal  disabilities  and  then 
left  the  subject  population  to  its  own  devices."  It  would  be  true, 
therefore,  to  say  that  while  the  Arab  Muslims  imposed  a  rigid  code 
of  conduct  on  themselves,  they  rarely  attempted  to  enforce  the  same 
rules  on  others.  On  the  other  hand,  their  avowed  policy  of  conquest, 
the  Holy  War,  brought  them  into  continual  conflict  with  Christians 
who  were,  if  anything,  less  tolerant  than  they.  After  the  fall  of  the 
Caliphate,  the  Arabs  added  little  that  was  new  to  the  practice  or 
theory  of  politics.  The  Muslim  ruler  was  much  like  any  other  oriental 
king  but  with  a  special  responsibility  towards  his  co-religionists  and 
a  sense  of  equality  with  them  for  purposes  of  religion.  This  ideal  is 
well  expressed  in  a  letter  from  the  Caliph  Omar  to  the  Governor  of 
Basra : — 

.  .  .  Strike  terror  into  wrongdoers  and  make  heaps  of  mutilated  limbs 
out  of  them.  Visit  the  sick  among  Moslems,  attend  their  funerals,  open 
your  gate  to  them  and  give  heed  in  person  to  their  affairs,  for  you  are 
but  a  man  amongst  them  except  that  God  has  allotted  you  the  heaviest 
burden.^ 

For  the  rest,  the  functions  of  a  Muslim  ruler  have  been  defined  as 
judgment,  taxation,  the  Friday  worship  and  the  Holy  War.  He  is 
accorded  no  legislative  power,  God  being  the  only  law-giver  and  his 
laws  already  known.  He  does  not  normally  even  interpret  the  law, 
that  being  the  work  of  experts  in  jurisprudence.  His  duties  were 
simple  and  so  remained  as  long  as  government  was  centred  in  Arabia. 

In  conquered  territories  the  Muslim  ruler  usually  inherited  the  more 

'  The  Legacy  of  Islam.  Ed.  by  Sir  Thomas  Arnold.  Oxford,  1931.  p.  301. 
-  The  Arabs  in  History.  Ccrnard  Lewis.  London,  1950.  p.  140. 

^  An  Introduction  to  the  Sociology  of  Islam.  R.  Levy.  2  vols.  London,  n.d.  Vol.  L 
p.  284. 


134  THH     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

complex  administration  of  a  more  settled  people.  While  the  arabs 
retained  the  position  of  an  alien  aristocracy,  ruling  in  the  name  of 
God  and  his  prophet,  they  found  themselves  compelled  to  employ 
advisers,  financial  experts,  architects,  engineers,  physicians,  teachers 
and  artists.  And  these  tended  more  and  more  to  be  Christians, 
Persians  and  Jews.  The  administration  soon  altered  radically  in 
character,  much  to  the  resentment  of  fanatical  Muslims.'  At  Baghdad, 
Damascus,  in  Tunis  and  Andalusia,  Muslim  rule  became  less  and  less 
distinguishable  from  that  of  any  oriental  monarchy.  Perhaps  the 
most  distinctive  feature  was  the  way  in  which  men  of  wealth  were 
encouraged  to  gain  religious  merit  by  founding  mosques  and  hospitals, 
building  bridges  and  rest-houses  (for  pilgrims)  and  constructing 
reservoirs  and  aqueducts.-  The  greatest  arab  achievements  were 
intellectual  and  resulted  from  combining  the  ideas  of  the  various 
peoples  they  had  conquered.  But  this  arab  bridging  of  the  gap  between 
East  and  West,  vitally  important  as  it  was  in  matters  of  pure  science,'^ 
was  perhaps  least  fruitful  in  political  development. 

The  most  interesting  example  of  a  Muslim  State  being  super- 
imposed upon  a  people  with  a  different  religion  is  that  of  Mogul 
India.  Historically,  this  happens  quite  late,  for  the  Mogul  Empire  in 
India  was  not  founded  by  Babar  until  1505  nor  completed  until  the 
time  of  Akbar  (1556-1605).  These  Moguls  were  of  Mongol  descent 
but  came  more  immediately  from  Turkestan.  They  were  Muslims  and 
brought  a  Muslim  army  into  the  Delhi  kingdom  of  Hindostan;  until 
then  divided  between  five  Muslim  and  two  Hindu  rulers.'*  It  is  inter- 
esting to  see  how  Muslim  rule  developed,  more  especially  in  the  reign 
of  Akbar  and  Aurangzib. 

The  duties  of  a  Muslim  king  in  an  Islamic  state  .  .  .  require  him  to  rule 
in  accordance  with  the  Quranic  law  ...  it  may  be  noted  that  Islamic 
law  divides  the  subjects  under  a  Muslim  king  into  two  sections, 
believers  and  non-believers,  and  imposes  a  duty  upon  the  king  to  see 
that  believers  live  as  true  Muslims,  and  non-believers  remain  in  the 
position  allotted  to  them  as  Zimonis,  a  position  which  denies  them 
equal  status  with  Muslim  subjects,  but  guarantees  security  of  life  and 
property  and  the  continuance  of  their  religion  and  religious  practices 
under  certain  defined  conditions. 

Thus  a  Muslim  king,  besides  performing  the  ordinary  duties  con- 
nected with  his  office,  has  also  to  uphold  the  dignity  of  his  religion 
through  defined  channels  and  to  rule  according  to  Islamic  law. 

The  impossibility  of  ruling  India  on  these  lines  was  felt  as  early  as 
the  thirteenth  century.  .  .  .^ 

•  A  Short  History  of  the  Middle  East.  G.  E.  Kirk.  London,  1948.  p.  24. 
-  Muslim  Institutions.  Maurice  Gaudefroy-Dcmombyncs.  London,  1950.  p.  114. 
'■'  Muhani/nad  '/I   Merer  to  all  Nations'.  Al-Haji  Qassim  All  Jairazbiiov.   London, 
1934.  p.  222. 

'  The  Agrarian  System  of  Moslem  India.  W.  H.  Moreland.  Cambridge,  1929.  p.  21. 
■'  The  Central  Structure  of  the  Mughal  Etnpire.  Ibn  Hasan.  Oxford,  1936.  p.  306. 


THEOCRACY  135 

The  impossibility  appears  from  what  Jalal-ud-din  is  said  to  have 
remarked  to  his  chief  adviser.  'Every  day  Hindus,  who  are  the 
deadliest  enemies  of  Islam,  pass  by  my  palace  beating  drums  and 
trumpets  and  go  out  to  the  Jamna  and  practise  idolatry  openly  .  .  . 
and  we  call  ourselves  Muslims.  .  .  ."^  This  is  a  confession  of  failure. 
But  the  fact  is  that  a  King  by  Hindu  ideas  was  more  sacred  and  more 
important  than  Muslim  law  would  quite  allow  him  to  be.  A  Hindu 
king  was  less  restrained  by  law.  The  Hindus  had  no  theory  of 
equality  before  God.  So  that  the  process  by  which  a  Muslim  monarchy 
succumbed  to  the  prevailing  Hindu  atmosphere  of  India  had  its 
consolations  for  the  monarch  himself. 

Something  of  this  process  may  appear  from  the  style  of  address 
used  respectively  at  the  Courts  of  Babur  and  Humayan.  Babur  was 
officially  described  as: 

.  .  .  King  of  the  four  quarters,  and  of  the  seven  heavens;  celestial 
sovereign;  diadem  of  the  sublime  throne;  great  of  genius  and  greatness- 
conferring;  fortune-increaser;  of  excellent  horoscope;  heaven  in 
comprehensiveness;  earth  in  stability;  lionhearted;  clime-capturer; 
lofty  in  splendour;  of  active  brain;  searcher  after  knowledge;  rank- 
breaking  lion  rampant;  exalter  of  dominion;  ocean-hearted;  of  illust- 
rious origin;  a  saintly  sovereign;  enthroned  in  the  kingdom  of  reality 
and  spirituality.^ 

This  cold  and  laconic  description  would  not  suffice  for  Humayan, 
who  was: 

.  .  .  Theatre  of  great  gifts;  source  of  lofty  inspirations;  exalter  of  the 
throne  of  the  Khilifat  of  greatness;  planter  of  the  standard  of  sublime 
rule;  Kingdom-bestowing  conqueror  of  Countries;  Auspicious  sitter 
upon  the  throne;  founder  of  the  Canons  of  justice  and  equity;  arranger 
of  the  demonstrations  of  greatness  and  sovereignty;  spring  of  the 
fountains  of  glory  and  beneficence;  water-gate  for  the  rivers  of  learn- 
ing; brimming  rain-cloud  of  choiceness  and  purity;  billowy  sea  of 
liberality  and  loyalty;  choosing  the  right,  recognising  the  truth;  sole 
foundation  of  many  laws;  both  a  King  of  dervish  race  and  a  dervish 
with  a  King's  title;  parterre-adorning  arranging  of  realm  and  religion; 
garland-twiner  of  spiritual  and  temporal  blossoms;  throne  of  the  sphere 
of  eternal  mysteries;  alidad  of  the  astrolabe  of  theory  and  practice; 
in  austerities  of  asceticism  and  spiritual  transports,  a  Grecian  Plato;  in 
executive  energy  and  the  paths  of  energy,  a  second  Alexander;  pearl 
of  the  seven  oceans  and  glory  of  the  four  elements,  ascension-point  of 
suns  and  dawn  of  Jupiter;  phoenix  (huma)  towering  to  the  heights  of 
heaven.'^ 

This  not  unfavourable  prospectus,  whether  accurate  or  not  in  all 

'  Ibid.  p.  307. 

'^  Tiie  Alibarnama  of  Abii-!-Foal.  Trans,  by  H.  Beveridge.  Vol.  I. 

"  The  Commercial  Policy  of  tlie  Moguls.  D.  Pant.  Bombay,  1930.  p.  30. 


136  THE     EVOLUTION    OF    POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

particulars — and  some  parts  of  it  seem  at  least  open  to  argument — is 
not  especially  Muslim.  Indeed,  the  words  'sole  foundation  of  many 
laws'  are  in  virtual  contradiction  of  Islamic  doctrine.  On  the  other 
hand,  these  titles  of  respect  (verging  perhaps  on  flattery)  suggest  how 
completely  the  Muslim  practice  had  been  assimilated  by  the  Hindu 
tradition.  It  involved  as  exacting  a  routine  for  Jahangir  as  it  had  for 
Chandragupta.  Akbar  worked  even  more  continually  and  Aurangzeb, 
if  he  worked  less,  prayed  more;  so  that  he  slept,  it  is  said,  only  three 
hours  in  the  twenty-four.  The  Moghul  system  of  government  was 
equally  in  accordance  with  Hindu  precedent,  and  the  list  of  Ministers 
originally  much  the  same.  But  the  effect  of  adding  a  Muslim  intoler- 
ance to  a  Hindu  administration  was  to  add  considerably  to  the 
government's  tendency  to  interfere  in  every  aspect  of  life.  This  is 
indicated  by  Akbar's  creation  of  new  departments  of  agriculture, 
pensions,  price-control,  inheritance,  minerals  and  forests.^  Humayan 
is  said  to  have  grouped  the  departments  into  four  categories,  dealing 
respectively  with  Fire,  Air,  Water  and  Earth;  logically  satisfying, 
perhaps,  as  a  plan  and  yet  not  without  an  element  of  mystery,  too." 
Ministers  were  paid  either  by  the  Treasury  or  by  the  allocation  of 
revenue  from  a  certain  area,  but  any  fortune  they  accumulated 
reverted  when  they  died  to  the  Emperor.^  Revenue  derived  mainly 
from  land,  the  one-sixth  of  the  produce  collected  under  Hindu  rule 
rising  to  between  a  third  and  a  half  in  Muslim  India.  There  were,  in 
addition,  customs  duties,  inheritance  taxes,  a  poll-tax  claimed  from 
Christians  and  Jews,  a  tax  on  salt  and  state  monopolies  established 
in  saltpetre,  indigo  and  lead.  State  interference  extended  to  religion 
and  Akbar  made  a  spirited  but  unsuccessful  attempt  to  unite  Islam 
and  Hinduism  in  a  new  state  religion  with  himself  (an  agnostic)  as 
Pope. 

While  the  Moghuls  thus  tried  to  unify  Hindustan  and  abolish 
Muslim  dominance,  their  rule  was  nevertheless  far  from  secular.^ 
Their  administration  was  penetrated  with  the  idea  that  the  State  must 
promote  morality  and  punish  irreligion  and  vice.  Thus,  the  'kotwal' 
of  the  Moghul  period  fairly  carried  out  the  duties  of  the  Nagaraka  or 
Town  Prefect  of  Mauryan  days. 

For  the  Kotwal  kept  a  register  of  houses  and  roads;  divided  the 
town  into  quarters,  and  placed  an  assistant  in  direct  charge  of  each 
quarter,  who  had  to  report  daily  arrivals  and  departures;  he  kept  a 
small  army  of  spies  or  detectives  ...  he  enforced  a  curfew-order;  kept 
an  eye  on  the  currency ;  fixed  local  prices  and  examined  dealers'  weights 
and   measures;   kept   inventories  of  the  property   of  persons   dying 

'  CamhriJi;e  History  of  India.  Vol.  IV.  Mughul  Period.  Cambridge  1937.  p.   133. 
'  The  Commercial  Policy  of  /he  Moi^iils.  D.  Pant.  Bombay,  1930.  p.  30. 
•  Mm^ha!  Rule  in  India.' S.  M.  Edwards  and  H.  L.  O.  Garrett.  Oxford.  1930. 
'  A  History  of  the  Great  Moghuls.  (1605-1739)  Pringie  Kennedy.  Caiculla,  1911. 


THEOCRACY  137 

intestate;  set  apart  wells  and  ferries  for  the  use  of  women;  stopped 
women  riding  on  horseback;  prevented  cattle  slaughter;  kept  a  check 
on  slavery;  expelled  religious  enthusiasts,  calendars,  and  dishonest 
tradesmen,  from  the  urban  area;  allotted  separate  quarters  to  butchers, 
sweepers  and  hunters;  set  apart  land  for  burial-grounds;  and  arranged 
for  the  illumination  of  the  town  on  the  occasion  of  festivals  and 
holidays.  This  by  no  means  exhausts  the  tale  of  the  kotwal's  duties. 
He  was  expected  to  know  everything  about  everybody;  to  visit  condign 
punishment  upon  any  one  who  demeaned  himself  by  consorting  and 
drinking  with  a  public  executioner;  to  prevent  sati,  if  the  woman  was 
disinclined  to  sacrifice  herself;  to  put  a  stop  to  circumcision  before  the 
age  of  twelve;  to  prevent  the  slaughter  of  oxen,  buffaloes,  horses  and 
camels;  and  during  the  reign  of  Akbar,  to  enforce  also  the  observance 
of  the  Ila/ii  calendar  and  of  the  special  festivals  and  ritual  prescribed 
by  the  Emperor.'^ 

To  quote  another  source: 

The  Kotwal  must  appoint  one  or  more  brokers,  to  transact  the 
various  kinds  of  commercial  business;  and,  after  taking  security  from 
them  must  station  such  in  the  market  place  that  they  may  afford 
information  regarding  such  things  as  are  bought  and  sold.  He  must 
also  make  it  a  rule  that  every  person  buying  or  selling,  without  the 
advice  of  the  above-mentioned  brokers,  will  be  deemed  in  fault;  that 
both  the  name  of  the  buyer  and  seller  must  be  written  in  the  register 
of  daily  transactions." 

While  we  may  feel  a  certain  sympathy  for  the  kotwal,  whose  leisure 
would  seem  to  have  been  strictly  limited,  we  must  also  note  the  wide 
variety  of  actions  (not  obviously  harmful  in  themselves)  which  might 
involve  punishment.  These  range  from  using  the  wrong  calendar  to 
setting  a  woman  on  horseback;  from  drinking  with  the  hangman  to 
selling  a  chicken  without  the  advice  of  the  official  broker.  Nor  did 
government  interference  end  there,  for  a  characteristic  of  Moghul 
policy  was  the  discouragement  of  the  use  of  intoxicants.  The  maker, 
the  seller,  and  the  drinker  of  wine  could  all  be  punished.  For  excess  in 
drinking  the  penalties  were  still  more  severe,  even  under  Akbar  (who 
drank  wine  himself).  During  his  reign,  wine  was  obtainable  only  on 
medical  advice  and  from  an  official  wine  shop.  'Persons  who  wished 
to  purchase  wine,  as  a  remedy  for  sickness,  could  do  so  by  having 
their  name,  and  that  of  their  father  and  grandfather,  written  down  by 
the  clerk'. ^  The  ways  of  officialdom  do  not  change,  it  seems. 

If  Akbar  was  half-hearted  as  a  moralist,  Aurangzib  (1658-1681) 
more  than  made  up  for  it."*  A  strict  Muslim,  he  appointed  a  censor 

'  Mughal  Rule  in  India,  op  cit.  pp.  185-186. 

'  The  Commercial  Policy  of  the  Moguls.  D.  Pant.  Bombay,  1930.  p.  44. 

^  Ibid.  p.  45. 

'  He  even  ordered  the  destruction  of  Hindu  schools  and  temples,  while  continuing 
to  encourage,  as  Akbar  had  done,  the  Muslim  schools  devoted  to  the  study  of  Urdu 
and  Persian. 


138  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

(Muhtasib)  in  every  large  city  'to  enforce  the  prophet's  laws  and  put 
down  forbidden  practices,  such  as  drinicing,  gambUng  and  the  ilhcit 
commerce  of  the  sexes'.^  The  same  officer  was  to  punish  heresy, 
blasphemy,  omission  of  the  five  daily  prayers  and  failure  to  observe 
Ramayan.  Later  in  life  Aurangzib  became  still  more  puritanical  and 
forbade  music  at  court. 

But  this  attempt  to  elevate  mankind  by  one  stroke  of  the  official  pen 
failed,  as  Akbar's  social  reforms  had  failed  before.  Aurangzib's 
government  made  itself  ridiculous  by  violently  enforcing  for  a  time, 
then  relaxing,  and  finally  abandoning  a  code  of  puritanical  morals 
opposed  to  the  feelings  of  the  entire  population,  without  first  trying  to 
educate  them  to  a  higher  level  of  thought.  As  Manucci  observed, 
there  were  few  who  did  not  drink  secretly,  and  even  the  ministers  and 
qazis  loved  to  get  drunk  at  home.  Gambling  continued  to  be  practised 
in  his  camp,  and  his  order  to  all  the  courtesans  and  dancing  girls  to 
marry  or  leave  the  realm  remained  a  dead  letter.- 

On  this  last  point  Akbar  had  been  less  drastic,  contenting  himself 
with  the  formation  of  a  prostitutes'  quarter  outside  each  town,  with 
a  superviser  and  clerk  appointed  'to  register  the  names  of  those  who 
resorted  to  them.  No  one  could  take  a  dancing  girl  to  his  house 
without  permission'.-'  These  rules,  while  indicating  disapproval,  also 
suggest  a  desire  to  share  in  the  profits.  As  Aurangzib  pointed  out, 
'Kingship  means  the  protector  of  the  realm  and  the  guardianship  of 
the  people  ...  a  king  is  merely  God's  elected  custodian  and  the  trustee 
of  His  money  for  the  benefit  of  the  subjects'.' 

As  an  early  experiment  in  Socialism,  Moghul  India  was  less  com- 
plete than  the  Chinese  experiment  of  a.d.  9  to  25.  Akbar  could  hardly 
rival  Wang  Mang  with  his  nationalisation  of  land,  timber,  iron  and 
copper.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Moghuls  fully  demonstrated  just  how 
over-centralised  a  State  could  become.  What  was  the  result?  It  was 
ruin.  It  was  ruin,  moreover,  of  a  peculiar  kind. 

...  in  the  India  of  our  period  the  working  of  the  administration  was, 
next  to  the  rainfall,  the  most  important  factor  in  the  economic  life  of 
the  country.  It  acted  directly  on  the  distribution  of  the  national  in- 
come to  an  extent  which  is  now  difficult  to  realise,  for  in  practice  the 
various  governments  disposed  of  somewhere  about  one  half  of  the 
entire  gross  produce  of  the  land,  and  they  disposed  of  it  in  such  a  way 
that  the  producers  were  left  with  a  bare  subsistence  or  very  little  more, 
while  the  energies  of  the  unproductive  classes  were  spent  in  the  struggle 
to  secure  the  largest  possible  share.  The  reaction  on  production  was 
inevitably    unfavourable;    producers   were    deprived    of  the    natural 

'  The  Cnmhri(/i;e  History  of  liulia.  Vol.  IV.  p.  230. 

-  Ihicl.  p.  230.  ' 

■'  The  Commercial  Policy  of  the  iVfoi^hitls.  D.  Pant.  pp.  45-46. 


THEOCRACY  139 

incentive  to  energy,  because  they  could  not  hope  to  retain  any  material 
proportion  of  an  increase  in  their  income;  men  of  ability  or  talent  were 
discouraged  from  producing  ...  it  was  better  to  be  a  peon  than  a 
peasant;  and  critics  who  express  surprise  at  the  tendency  of  Indian 
brains  and  energy  to  seek  employment  in  the  service  of  the  State  will 
find  ample  explanation  in  the  history  of  the  centuries  during  which  no 
other  career  was  possible.^ 

What  W.  H.  Moreland  and  his  readers  may  have  found  difficult  to 
visualise  in  1923,  we  are  now  perhaps  in  a  better  position  to  focus.  It 
needs  nowadays  no  such  effort  of  imagination  to  picture  a  State  in 
which  productive  and  creative  energy  has  been  brought  to  a  standstill 
by  excess  of  administration.  It  is  even  easier  for  us  to  foresee  the 
national  bankruptcy  which  is  likely  to  result.  The  process,  in  Moghul 
India,  was  relatively  swift.  By  the  reign  of  Aurangzib  a  policy  of  over- 
taxation had  produced  a  scarcity  of  peasants  and  a  tendency  for  land 
to  go  out  of  cultivation.  Francois  Bernier,  who  spent  eight  years  as 
physician  at  the  Moghul  Court,  remarked  upon  this,  pointing  out 
that 

.  .  .  many  of  the  peasantry,  driven  to  despair  by  so  execrable  a  tyranny, 
abandon  the  country,  and  seek  a  more  tolerable  mode  of  existence, 
either  in  the  towns  or  camps;  as  bearers  of  burdens,  carriers  of  water, 
or  servants  to  horsemen.  Sometimes  they  fly  to  the  territories  of  a 
Raja,  because  there  they  find  less  oppression.  .  .  .- 

In  fact,  by  the  reign  of  Aurangzib,  government  was  defeating  its 
own  end.  All  interest  was  concentrated  upon  the  division  of  the  annual 
produce  and  no  attention  was  paid  to  any  plan  for  increasing  it.  The 
system  was  bound  to  collapse,  and  collapse,  in  effect,  it  did.  But  the 
interest,  for  our  present  purpose,  of  this  experiment  is  not  in  its 
economic  aspect  but  in  the  moral  purpose  which  impels  a  theocracy 
into  thus  attempting  to  control  every  human  activity  from  the  cradle 
to  the  grave. 

Theocracy  has  not,  of  course,  been  confined  to  Oriental  kingdoms. 
Contemporary  with  the  Moghuls,  for  instance,  lived  John  Calvin, 
who  inspired  the  setting  up  of  a  theocratic  Republic  at  Geneva. 
Calvin's  doctrines  centre  upon  predestination.  He  taught 

....  that  God,  by  his  eternal  and  immutable  Counsel,  determined 
once  and  for  all  those  whom  it  was  his  pleasure  to  admit  to  salvation, 
and  those  whom,  on  the  other  hand,  it  was  his  pleasure  to  doom  to 
destruction:  we  maintain  that  this  counsel,  as  regards  his  Elect,  is 
founded  on  his  free  mercy,  without  any  respect  of  human  merit.  While 
those  whom  he  dooms  to  destruction  are  excluded  from  access  to  life 

'  From  Akbar  to  Aurangzib,  a  stitdv  in  Indian  Economic  Historv.  W.  H.  Moreland. 
London,  1923.  p.  233. 

-  The  Agrarian  System  of  Moslem  India.  W.  H.  Moreland.  Cambridge,  1929.  p.  147. 


140  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

by  a  just  and  blameless  but  at  the  same  time  incomprehensible  decree. 
In  regard  to  his  Elect,  we  regard  calling  as  the  evidence  of  election  and 
Justification  as  another  symbol  of  its  manifestation.' 

Geneva  was  ruled  by  an  oligarchy  of  merchants  and  it  was  these 
that  Calvin  converted,  making  them  all  eager  to  appear  (and  mani- 
festly) as  of  the  Elect.  The  result  was  an  identification  of  the  objects  of 
Church  and  State.  The  magistrates  were  to  see  that  God  was  obeyed, 
backsliders  punished  and  heretics  killed.  What  this  Calvinist  discipline 
meant  is  apparent  from  the  Registers  of  the  Genevan  Council  from 
1545  to  1547. 

A  man  who  swore  by  the  'body  and  blood  of  Christ'  was  condemned 
to  sit  in  the  public  square  in  the  stocks,  and  to  be  fined. 

Another,  hearing  an  ass  bray,  and  saying  jestingly,  'II  chante  un 
beau  psaume',  was  sentenced  to  temporary  banishment  from  the 
city.  .  .  . 

...  A  young  girl,  in  Church,  singing  the  words  of  a  song  to  the  tune  of 
the  psalm,  was  ordered  to  be  whipt  by  her  parents. 

Drunkennessanddebauchery  were  visited  with  more  severe  penalties; 
adultery  more  than  once  with  death.  Prostitutes  who  ventured  back 
to  Geneva  were  mercilessly  thrown  into  the  Rhone.  Cards  were 
altogether  prohibited.  Rope-dancers  and  conjurers  were  forbidden  to 
exhibit.  .  .  .- 

But  while  Calvin  and  Aurangzib  had  thus  so  much  in  common,  the 
former's  rule  was  far  the  more  effective  as  extending  over  only  a 
small  area.  For  a  time  at  least,  Geneva  was  very  godly  indeed.  But  it 
was  no  part  of  Calvinist  doctrine  to  make  men  forswear  their  business 
and  seek  a  life  of  contemplation.  They  were  to  continue  their  normal 
work,  showing  their  membership  of  the  Elect  by  their  conduct.  This 
would  mean  strict  morality,  sobriety,  plain  dress  and  no  ritual.  But 
how  could  they  show  that  God  approved  of  them?  One  way  was  by 
worldly  success,  known  as  'making  good'.  So  that  morality  soon  came 
to  include  the  virtues  likely  to  promote  success:  hard  work,  abstin- 
ence, punctuality,  exact  accounts,  tidiness  and  a  strict  control  over 
the  young  and  the  poor.  Ensuring  that  employees  did  their  work  had 
the  double  merit  of  making  money  and  preventing  the  idleness  which 
would  lead  to  mischief.  Here  was  the  ideal  religion  for  merchants  and 
industrialists,  tending  to  favour  wealth  but  discourage  luxury.  A 
typical  hatred  of  the  Calvinist  was  for  the  theatre,  as  combining 
colour,  music,  beauty,  worldliness,  frivolity,  sex,  sin,  waste  of  money 
and  waste  of  time.  The  calvinist  wanted  a  republic  ruled  by  people 
like  himself,  necessarily  a  small  minority.   Mankind  being  mostly 

'  Institutes.  John  Calvin.  Bk.  Ill,  XXI,  5-7.  See  Western  Political  Thought.  John 
Bowie.  London,  1947.  pp.  277-283. 

-  The  Political  Consequences  of  the  Reformation.  R.  H.  Murray.  London,  1926.  p.  9L 


THEOCRACY  141 

damned  'except  in  so  far  as  Grace  rescues  some,  not  many,  who  would 
otherwise  perish',  the  Elect  were  of  necessity  few.  if  they  were  power- 
less, Calvin  told  them  to  be  patient  and  accept  the  trial  of  their  faith; 
but  later  Calvinists,  like  Knox  and  Buchanan,  were  more  inclined  to 
preach  resistance  to  Catholic  tyranny.  When  weak,  they  talked  of 
Natural  Law  and  the  limits  of  State  interference.  When  strong,  they 
talked  of  the  need  for  a  godly  discipline.  In  denying  themselves  many 
pleasures  which  others  would  think  harmless,  they  could  still  take 
pleasure  in  power  and  cruelty.  Their  final  authority  was  God;  that  is, 
holy  scripture  as  interpreted  by  themselves. 


CHAPTER    XI 

Theocracy  justified  in  Theory 


THEOCRATIC  government,  if  based  upon  a  revealed  religion, 
rests  upon  an  assumption  which  is,  to  the  behever,  manifestly 
true.  Simplest  of  these  is  the  Muslim  creed  There  is  no  God  but 
Allah  and  Muhammad  is  the  prophet  of  Allah'.  Once  that  is  agreed, 
the  rest  follows  logically.  Government  should  follow  Muhammad's 
precept  and  example.  If  it  is  agreed,  similarly,  that  'Jesus  is  the  Son 
of  God',  it  remains  only  to  discover  and  follow  his  ideas  and  practice. 
The  Buddhist's  argument  had  been  much  the  same  and  was  framed 
at  an  earlier  date,  it  need  not  astonish  us,  therefore,  to  discover  that 
the  more  fervent  believers  in  the  revealed  religions  have  left  us  few 
works  of  political  theory.  On  the  one  hand,  they  have  many  of  them 
regarded  this  world  as  too  transitory  to  be  worth  amending.  On  the 
other  hand,  such  reform  as  is  worth  while  must  be  in  accordance  with 
God's  will.  And,  granted  the  assumption  that  God's  will  is  known, 
the  idea  of  accepting  any  lesser  authority  is  manifestly  absurd.  The 
theoretical  explanations  of  Theocracy  are  not,  therefore,  concerned 
for  the  most  part  with  the  abstract  question  of  what  is  best.  They  are 
concerned  more  with  interpreting  God's  will  and  applying  it  to  the 
problem  in  hand. 

Among  the  first  of  these  religious  thinkers  was  St.  Augustine  (a.d. 
354-430)  the  Bishop  of  Hippo,  his  diocese  being  now  known  as  Bona, 
in  Algeria.  More  of  a  philosopher  than  St.  Ambrose,  he  wrote  his 
De  Civitate  Dei  after  the  sack  of  Rome  in  410,  not  completing  it 
however  until  426.  His  first  object  was  to  prove  (as  he  easily  might) 
that  Rome's  fall  was  not  due,  as  some  alleged,  to  the  weakening 
influence  of  Christianity.  He  goes  on,  however,  from  there  to  show 
that  the  world  is  divided  into  two  societies,  those  who  dwell  in  the 
invisible  City  of  God,  and  those  who  dwell  in  sin.  The  worldly 
society  must  be  absorbed  by  the  City  of  God,  for  'the  hell  of  secular 
society  unredeemed  by  Christianity  is  not  even  capable  of  improve- 
ment'. He  infers,  therefore,  that  Christianity  can  improve  the  State. 
More  than  that,  he  would  have  the  State  closely  bound  up  with  the 
Church.  He  does  not,  however,  in  so  many  words,  make  the  lay  ruler 
subordinate.  A  modern  writer  has  expressed  Augustine's  position 
thus: 

The  Christian  ruler  needs  the  Church  for  guidance  in  the  spiritual 

142 


THEOCRACY     JUSTIFIED     IN     THEORY  143 

life:  the  bishops  need  the  help  of  the  secular  law  to  deal  with  secular 
affairs;  in  theory  they  ought  to  work  together  in  harmony,  but  the 
moment  they  cease  to  do  so  the  spiritual  authority  will  be  invoked.  St. 
Augustine  has  stated  the  fundamental  axiom  that  the  secular  state 
was  spiritually  dead  unless  it  made  a  close  alliance  with  the  Church, 
and  human  life  only  intelligible  and  significant  in  the  light  of  the 
doctrine  of  the  Fall  and  the  Redemption. ^ 

That  is  St.  Augustine's  basic  assumption  but  he  argues,  further, 
that  God  has  prescribed  (and  was  bound  to  prescribe)  how  even  the 
secular  State  should  be  ruled.  In  an  eloquent  passage  he  asks,  in 
effect,  how  it  could  be  otherwise: 

Wherefore  the  great  and  mighty  God  with  His  Word  and  His  Holy 
Spirit  (which  three  are  one),  God  only  omnipotent.  Maker  and 
Creator  of  every  soul,  and  of  every  body,  in  participation  of  whom, 
all  such  are  happy  that  follow  His  truth  and  reject  vanities:  He  that 
made  man  a  reasonable  creature  of  soul  and  body,  and  He  that  did 
neither  let  him  pass  unpunished  for  his  sin,  nor  yet  excluded  him  from 
mercy:  He  that  gave  both  unto  good  and  bad  essence  with  the  stones, 
power  of  production  with  the  trees,  senses  with  the  beasts  of  the  field, 
and  understanding  with  the  angels:  He,  from  whom  is  all  being,  beauty, 
form  and  order,  number,  weight  and  measure:  He,  from  whom  all 
nature,  mean  and  excellent,  all  seeds  of  form,  all  forms  of  seed,  all 
motion,  both  of  forms  and  seeds  derive  and  have  being:  He  that  gave 
flesh  the  original  beauty,  strength,  propagation,  form  and  shape, 
health  and  symmetry:  He  that  gave  the  unreasonable  soul,  sense, 
memory  and  appetite,  the  reasonable  besides  these  phantasy,  under- 
standing, and  will:  He  (I  say)  having  left  neither  heaven,  nor  earth, 
nor  angel,  nor  man,  no  nor  the  most  base  and  contemptible  creature, 
neither  the  bird's  feather,  nor  the  herb's  flower,  nor  the  tree's  leaf, 
without  the  true  harmony  of  their  parts,  and  peaceful  concord  of 
composition;  it  is  no  way  credible,  that  He  would  leave  the  kingdoms 
of  men,  and  their  bondages  and  freedoms  loose  and  uncomprised  in 
the  laws  of  His  eternal  providence." 

St.  Augustine's  argument  proceeds  from  this  point.  The  secular 
State  has  a  right  order  of  its  own  and,  rightly  ordered,  can  be  useful  to 
those  who  dwell  in  the  City  of  God.  It  has  a  relative  value,  based 
upon  and  adjusted  to  sinful  human  nature.  Thus,  such  institutions  as 
government,  property  and  slavery  have  a  value  where  sin  has  made 
an  absolute  righteousness  impossible.  When  the  secular  State  is 
absorbed  by  the  City  of  God  they  will  disappear.  In  the  meanwhile, 
they  are  better  than  disorder  and  are  instituted  accordingly  by  God. 
But  St.  Augustine  is  careful  to  emphasise  that  the  supreme  good 
cannot  be  attained  by  any  earthly  means,  whatever  pagan  philosophy 

'  Western  Political  Thought.  John  Bowie.  London,  1947.  p.  138. 
'  The  Citv  of  God.  St.  Augustine.  Translated  by  John   Healey.   1610.   Reprinted, 
London,  1931.  (Chapter  II). 


144  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

may  have  taught.  Thus  the  pagan  virtues  of  temperance,  prudence, 
justice  and  fortitude  do  not  lead  (without  God)  to  happiness;  and 
fortitude  by  itself  leads  only  to  suicide.  The  supreme  good  is  eternal 
peace,  peace  of  the  soul,  which  comes  only  from  God.  It  should  be 
attained  successively  in  the  home,  the  city,  the  state,  the  world  and 
the  universe.  Until  this  happens,  a  relative  peace  may  be  enjoyed  in 
any  society  based  on  love  where: 

They  who  exercise  authority  are  in  the  service  of  those  over  whom 
they  appear  to  exercise  authority;  and  they  exercise  their  authority 
not  from  a  desire  for  domination  but  by  virtue  of  a  duty  to  give  counsel 
and  aid.^ 

While,  however,  agreeing  that  a  wise  and  virtuous  rule  may  exist, 
he  emphasises  that  the  rule  is  ordained  by  God  and  that  a  bad  rule 
is  intended  as  a  punishment. 

.  .  .  This  one  God  .  .  .  whilst  it  was  His  pleasure,  let  Rome  have 
sovereignty:  so  did  He  with  Assyria  and  Persia  who  (as  their  books 
say)  worshipped  only  two  gods. 

.  .  .  And  so  for  the  men:  He  that  gave  Marius  rule,  gave  Caesar  rule: 
He  that  gave  Augustus  it,  gave  Nero  it.  .  .  .  He  that  gave  it  to  Con- 
stantine  the  Christian,  gave  it  also  to  Julian  the  Apostate,  whose 
worthy  towardness  was  wholly  blinded  by  sacrilegious  curiosity.  .  .  r 

So  far  from  advising  revolt  against  a  bad  ruler  St.  Augustine  doubts 
even  whether  it  matters  sufficiently. 

For  what  skills  it  in  respect  of  this  short  and  transitory  life,  under 
whose  dominion  a  mortal  man  doth  live,  so  he  be  not  compelled  to 
acts  of  impiety  or  injustice.  .  .  .  [He  argues  that  the  States  conquered 
by  Rome  might  just  as  well  have  given  in  by  agreement.]  For  what  does 
conquering,  or  being  conquered,  hurt  or  profit  men's  lives,  manners, 
or  dignities  either?  I  see  no  good  it  does,  but  only  adds  unto  their 
intolerable  vainglory,  who  aim  at  such  matters,  and  war  for  them,  and 
lastly  receive  them  as  their  labour's  reward.  .  .  .  Take  away  vain- 
glory and  what  are  men  but  men  ?^ 

He  remarks  elsewhere  on  the  futility  of  war,  observing  that  one 
State  will  attack  another  'and  if  it  conquer,  it  extols  itself  and  so 
becomes  its  own  destruction  .  .  .  thus  is  the  victory  deadly;  for  it 
cannot  keep  a  sovereignty  for  ever  where  it  got  a  victory  for  once'. 
He  points  out  that  men  desire  an  earthly  peace  and  seek  it  through 
war,  but  even  if  they  gain  it  (while  still  neglecting  the  City  of  God  and 
eternal  victory)  'misery  must  needs  follow'.  He  returns  to  this  theme 
in  Chapter  XII,  Book  XV. 

'  St.  Augustine,  op.  cit.  Introduction,  p.xliii. 
=  Ibid.  Chap.  VIII.  Book  V. 
^  Ibid. 


THEOCRACY     JUSTIFIED     IN     THEORY  145 

.  .  .  joy  and  peace  are  desired  alike  of  all  men.  The  warrior  would  but 
conquer:  war's  aim  is  nothing  but  glorious  peace:  what  is  victory  but  a 
suppression  of  resistants,  which  being  done,  peace  follows?  So  that 
peace  is  war's  purpose,  the  scope  of  all  military  discipline,  and  the 
limit  at  which  all  just  contentions  level.  All  men  seek  peace  by  war,  but 
none  seek  war  by  peace.  For  they  that  perturb  the  peace  they  live  in, 
do  it  not  for  hate  of  it,  but  to  shew  their  power  in  alteration  of  it. 
They  would  not  disannul  it,  but  they  would  have  it  as  they  like;  and 
though  they  break  into  seditions  from  the  rest,  yet  must  they  hold  a 
peaceful  force  with  their  fellows  that  are  engaged  with  them,  or  else 
they  shall  never  effect  what  they  intend.  Even  the  thieves  themselves 
that  molest  all  the  world  besides  them,  are  at  peace  amongst  themselves. 

If  peace  is  thus  desired  by  all,  how  much  better  is  the  universal 
peace  which  comes  from  God. 

St.  Augustine  has  thus  little  encouragement  to  offer  to  the  intending 
rebel.  Nor  has  he  more  than  spiritual  consolation  to  offer  to  the  slave. 
He  supposes  that  slavery  may  be  a  punishment  for  sin  but  argues  that 
there  are  worse  fates  than  slavery. 

...  it  is  a  happier  servitude  to  serve  man  than  lust:  for  lust  (to  omit  all 
the  other  passions)  practises  extreme  tyranny  upon  the  hearts  of  those 
that  serve  it,  be  it  lust  after  sovereignty  or  fleshly  lust.  But  in  the  peace- 
ful orders  of  states,  wherein  one  man  is  under  another,  as  humility  does 
benefit  the  servant,  so  does  pride  endamage  the  superior.  But  take  a 
man  as  God  created  him  at  first,  and  so  he  is  neither  slave  to  man  nor 
to  sin.  But  penal  servitude  had  the  institution  from  that  law  which 
commands  the  conservation,  and  forbids  the  disturbance  of  nature's 
order:  for  if  that  law  had  not  first  been  transgressed,  penal  servitude 
had  never  been  enjoined. 

Therefore  the  apostle  warns  servants  to  obey  their  masters  and  to 
serve  them  with  cheerfulness,  and  good  will:  to  the  end  that  if  they 
cannot  be  made  free  by  their  masters,  they  make  their  servitude  a 
freedom  to  themselves,  by  serving  them  not  in  deceitful  fear,  but  in 
faithful  love,  until  iniquity  be  overpassed,  and  all  men's  power  and 
principality  dis-annulled  and  God  only  be  all  in  all. 

Speaking  thus  as  member  of  a  formerly  (and  still  potentially) 
persecuted  minority,  St.  Augustine  thus  preaches  a  doctrine  of  non- 
resistance.  The  persecution  is  by  God's  will  and  for  the  benefit  of 
those  afflicted,  whose  compensation  shall  be  in  the  life  hereafter  and 
whose  immediate  consolation  may  be  in  the  thought  that  the  perse- 
cutor is  doing  more  harm  to  himself  than  to  those  he  oppresses.  But 
there  is  to  this  doctrine  an  important  exception.  It  does  not  matter 
under  whose  rule  a  person  may  live  'so  he  be  not  compelled  to  acts  of 
impiety  or  injustice'.  But  what  if  he  isl  St.  Augustine  does  not  ex- 
pressly enjoin  resistance  but  the  doctrinal  loophole  is  there.  For, 


146  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

granted  that  the  behever  should  suffer  death  rather  than  commit  an 
act  of  impiety,  must  he  also  resign  himself  to  having  his  children 
brought  up  as  pagans  and  so  lost  to  salvation?  The  inference  is  that 
he  may  ultimately  have  to  resist  oppression  in  the  name  of  Christ. 

But  a  far  greater  importance  attaches  to  St.  Augustine's  advice  to. 
the  Christian  who  finds  himself  in  power,  with  the  force,  the  numbers 
and  the  law  on  his  side.  How  is  he  to  use  his  authority?  First  of  all, 
he  is  (as  we  have  seen)  to  serve  those  over  whom  he  appears  to  rule. 
His  responsibility  is  to  be  a  burden  rather  than  a  privilege,  more 
especially  if  he  is  Emperor. 

For  we  Christians  do  not  say,  that  Christian  emperors  are  happy, 
because  they  have  a  long  reign,  or  die  leaving  their  sons  in  quiet 
possession  of  their  empires,  or  have  been  ever  victorious,  or  powerful 
against  all  their  opposers.  These  are  but  gifts  and  solaces  of  this 
laborious,  joyless  life;  idolaters,  and  such  as  belong  not  to  God  (as 
these  emperors  do)  may  enjoy  them.  .  .  .  But  happy  they  are  (say  we) 
if  they  reign  justly,  free  from  being  puffed  up  with  the  glossing  exalta- 
tions of  their  attendance,  or  the  cringes  of  their  subjects,  if  they  know 
themselves  to  be  but  men  ...  if  their  lusts  be  the  lesser  because  they 
have  the  larger  licence  ...  if  they  do  all  things,  not  for  glory,  but  for 
charity,  and  with  all,  and  before  all,  give  God  the  due  sacrifice  of 
prayer,  for  their  imperfections;  such  Christian  emperors  we  call  happy, 
here  in  hope,  and  hereafter,  when  the  time  we  look  for  comes 
indeed.  .  .  .^ 

Here  we  have  a  sketch  of  the  ruler's  character,  his  essential  humility, 
but  no  suggested  policy.  A  hint  of  what  he  is  to  do  is  contained,  how- 
ever, in  another  passage,  devoted  to  the  example  of  the  Christian 
martyrs,  which  concludes: — 

.  .  .  the  kings  whose  edicts  afilicted  the  Church  came  humbly  to  be 
warriors  under  that  banner  which  they  cruelly  before  had  sought 
utterly  to  abolish:  beginning  now  to  persecute  the  false  gods,  for 
whom  before  they  had  persecuted  the  servants  of  the  true  God." 

This  is  an  historical  statement  and  one  we  need  not  question.  But 
St.  Augustine  does  not  blame  the  later  persecution  as  he  blames,  or 
seems  to  blame,  the  first.  'Warriors'  we  may  take  in  a  metaphorical 
sense  if  we  choose.  But  it  is  doubtful  whether  St.  Augustine  could 
consistently  deplore  any  political  pressure  which  would  lead  to 
conversions  and  to  the  baptism  of  those  otherwise  damned  to  all 
eternity. 

On  the  vital  question  of  how  the  Christian  ruler  is  to  treat  pagan  or 
heretical  subjects  St.  Augustine  is  not  explicit.  He  is,  on  the  other  hand, 
emphatic  on  the  question  of  how  a  Christian  master  should  treat  his 

'  St.  Augustine,  op.  cit.  Chap.  XV.  Book  V. 

■"  St.  Augustine,  op.  cit.  Chap.  XXXIX.  Book  XIV 


THEOCRACY    JUSTIFIED     IN     THEORY  147 

children  and  servants.  Dealing  with  what  he  calls  'the  just  law  of 
sovereignty',  he  explains^  that  'our  righteous  forefathers'  did  not 
treat  their  servants  and  their  children  alike  in  all  respects,  save  in 
matters  of  religion.  For  religious  purposes  they  were  fathers  of  their 
households,  servants  and  all. 

.  .  .  But  such  as  merit  that  name  truly,  do  care  that  all  their  families 
should  continue  in  the  service  of  God,  as  if  they  were  all  their  own 
children,  desiring  that  they  should  all  be  placed  in  the  household  of 
heaven,  where  command  is  wholly  unnecessary,  because  then  they  are 
past  their  charge,  having  attained  immortality,  which  until  they  be 
installed  in,  the  masters  are  to  endure  more  labour  in  their  govern- 
ment, than  the  servants  in  their  service.  If  any  be  disobedient  and 
offend  this  just  peace,  he  is  forthwith  to  be  corrected,  with  strokes,  or 
some  other  convenient  punishment,  whereby  he  may  be  re-engraffed 
into  the  peaceful  stock  from  whence  his  disobedience  has  torn  him. 
For  as  it  is  no  good  turn  to  help  a  man  unto  a  smaller  good  by  the  loss 
of  a  greater:  no  more  is  it  the  part  of  innocence  by  pardoning  a  small 
offence,  to  let  it  grow  unto  a  fouler.  It  is  the  duty  of  an  innocent  to 
hurt  no  man,  but,  withal,  to  curb  sin  in  all  he  can,  and  to  correct  sin 
in  whom  he  can,  that  the  sinner's  correction  may  be  profitable  to 
himself,  and  his  example  a  terror  unto  others.  Every  family  then  being 
part  of  the  city,  every  beginning  having  some  relation  unto  some  end, 
and  every  part  tending  to  the  integrity  of  the  whole,  it  follows 
apparently,  that  the  family's  peace  adheres  unto  the  city's,  that  is  the 
orderly  command  and  obedience  in  the  family  has  real  reference  to  the 
orderly  rule  and  subjection  in  the  city.  So  that  'the  father  of  the 
family'  may  fetch  his  instruction  from  the  city's  government,  whereby 
he  may  proportionate  the  peace  of  his  private  estate,  by  that  of  the 
common. 

If  we  accept  St.  Augustine's  comparison  between  family  and  state 
(or  city),  we  may  fairly  assume  that  the  relationship  is  not  that  of  a 
one-sided  imitation.  If  the  father  of  a  household  is  to  copy  the 
impartial  sway  of  the  town  council,  is  not  the  ruler  to  regard  himself 
as  the  father  of  his  people?  Should  he  not  treat  his  subjects  as  the 
father  is  to  treat  his  children?  St.  Augustine's  ideal  ruler  is  to  regard 
his  responsibility  as  a  heavy  burden,  assumed  reluctantly.  This  was 
no  novelty  as  an  idea — Indian  Brahmans  had  the  same  conception 
and  had  it  long  before.  But  the  Christian  ruler,  if  he  regards  his 
subjects  as  his  children,  may,  and  in  fact  must,  curb  and  correct  sin  in 
such  fashion  that  'the  sinner's  correction  may  be  profitable  to  himself 
and  his  example  a  terror  unto  others'  And  what  is  sin  ?  Sin  is  and  can 
only  be  the  sort  of  action  which  Christ  would  have  disapproved.  The 
subject  will  fare  ill,  therefore,  who  differs  from  his  bishop  or  ruler  in 
his  interpretation  of  Christ's  teaching.  And  he  will  certainly  fare 
worse  if  he  rejects  it  altogether. 

'  St.  Augustine,  op.  cit.  Chap.  XVI.  Book  XV. 


148  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

As  against  the  gods  of  pagan  mythology,  St.  Augustine  can  afford 
to  be  only  mildly  severe.  He  regards  them  as  devils  rather  than 
illusions.  The  stage-plays  connected  with  their  cult  he  regards  as 
merely  obscene.  As  for  historians  who  contend  that  the  world  has 
existed  for  many  thousands  of  years,  they  are  talking  nonsense;  worse, 
they  are  talking  heresy.  Holy  scripture  gives  the  world  a  past  history 
of  six  thousand  years  at  most.^  But  St.  Augustine  was  not  seriously 
worried  about  pagan  beliefs,  which  he  knew  to  be  on  the  wane.  The 
mischief  was  to  begin  when  the  Church  should  be  confronted,  not  by 
a  dying  pagan  mythology  but  by  an  active  faith  like  Islam,  as  positive 
as  Christianity  in  doctrine  and  almost  as  intolerant  in  practice. 
Towards  such  a  heresy  the  Christian  attitude  is  perfectly  clear  from 
the  fifth  century  onwards.  It  is  the  argument  outlined  in  The  City  of 
God  and  absorbed  by  such  readers  as  Gregory  the  Great,  Charle- 
magne, Peter  Abelard  and  Dante.  By  this  argument  the  secular  State 
is  necessary  and  ordained  by  God,  even  a  bad  ruler  deserving  obedi- 
ence. But  the  Christian  ruler  must  seek  the  advice  of  the  Church  in 
matters  of  doctrine  and  ethics;  for  his  is  only  a  man,  and  not  even  a 
priest.  The  Christian  prince  must  then,  on  ecclesiastical  advice,  curb 
sin  and  correct  sinners  for  their  own  good.  This  may  not  seem  an 
attractive  programme  to  the  reader  of  to-day.  But  it  is  the  logical 
consequence  of  all  that  St.  Augustine  believed.  Granted  his  original 
premise  that  all  unbelievers  are  destined  for  eternal  torment,  it 
scarcely  matters  what  means  are  used  to  save  them.  A  little  violence 
may  surely  be  used  to  prevent  a  blind  man  going  over  a  precipice.  It 
is  cruelty  to  spare  the  child  punishment.  It  is  worse  cruelty  to  allow 
the  heretic  to  corrupt  others.  Better,  far  better,  is  the  chastisement 
which  helps  the  sinner  to  repent. 

It  would  be  possible  to  trace  this  central  theme  of  theocratic 
government  through  the  whole  history  of  Medieval  Europe.  We  could 
quote  extensively  from  the  trial  of  St.  Joan  to  illustrate  the  inexorable 
logic  of  this  doctrine.  It  is  conveniently  summed  up,  however,  in  the 
sentence  pronounced  by  the  judges,  the  Bishop  and  the  Inquisitor;  and 
again  in  the  report  sent  afterwards  to  the  Pope  from  the  University 
of  Paris.  The  sentence  reads: 

...  As  often  as  the  poisonous  virus  of  heresy  obstinately  attaches 
itself  to  a  member  of  the  Church  and  transforms  him  into  a  limb  of 
Satan,  most  diligent  care  must  be  taken  to  prevent  the  foul  contagion 
of  this  pernicious  leprosy  from  spreading  ....  The  decrees  of  the  holy 
Fathers  have  laid  down  that  hardened  heretics  must  be  separated  from 
the  midst  of  the  just,  rather  than  permit  such  pernicious  vipers  to  lodge 
in  the  bosom  of  Our  Holy  Mother  Church,  to  the  great  peril  of  the 
rest.  ... 

'  St.  Augustine,  op.  cit.  Chap.  X.  Book  XI. 


THEOCRACY     JUSTIFIED     IN     THEORY  149 

...  we  denounce  you  as  a  rotten  member,  which,  so  that  you  shall  not 
infect  the  other  members  of  Christ,  must  be  cast  out  of  the  unity  of 
the  Church,  cut  off  from  her  body,  and  given  over  to  the  secular 
power  .  .  .  [i.e.  to  be  burnt  alive]. ^ 

The  letter  agreed  by  the  University  of  Paris,  'the  light  of  all  know- 
ledge and  the  extirpator  of  errors','  is  more  significant  still. 

We  believe,  most  Holy  Father,  that  vigilant  endeavours  to  prevent 
the  contamination  of  the  Holy  Church  by  the  poison  of  the  errors  of 
false  prophets  and  evil  men,  are  the  more  necessary  since  the  end  of 
the  world  appears  to  be  at  hand. 

...  So  when  we  see  new  prophets  arise  who  boast  of  receiving  revela- 
tions from  God  and  the  blessed  of  the  triumphant  land,  when  we  see 
them  announce  to  men  the  future  and  things  passing  the  keenness  of 
human  thought,  daring  to  accomplish  new  and  unwonted  acts,  then  it 
is  fitting  to  our  pastoral  solicitude  to  set  all  our  energies  to  prevent 
them  from  overwhelming  the  people,  too  eager  to  believe  new  things, 
by  these  strange  doctrines,  before  the  spirits  which  they  claim  to  come 
from  God  have  been  confirmed.  It  would  indeed  be  easy  for  these 
crafty  and  dangerous  sowers  of  deceitful  inventions  to  infect  the 
Catholic  people,  if  everyone,  without  the  approbation  and  consent  of 
our  Holy  Mother  Church,  were  free  to  invent  supernatural  revelations 
at  his  own  pleasure,  and  could  usurp  the  authority  of  God,  and  His 
saints.  Therefore,  most  Holy  Father,  the  watchful  diligence  lately 
sTiown  by  the  reverend  father  in  Christ,  the  lord  bishop  of  Beauvais 
and  the  vicar  of  the  lord  Inquisitor  of  Heretical  Error,  appointed  by  the 
apostolic  Holy  See  to  the  kingdom  of  France,  for  the  protection  of  the 
Christian  religion,  seems  to  us  most  commendable, 
[the  letter  describes  the  trial  and  execution]. 

.  .  .  Wherefore  it  was  clearly  recognised  by  all  how  dangerous  it  was, 
how  fearful,  to  give  too  light  credence  to  the  modern  irventions  which 
have  for  some  time  past  been  scattered  in  this  most  Christian  kingdom, 
not  by  this  woman  only,  but  by  many  others  also;  and  all  the  faithful 
of  the  Christian  religion  must  be  warned  by  such  a  sad  example  not  to 
act  so  hastily  after  their  own  desires,  but  to  listen  to  the  teachings  of  the 
Church  and  the  instruction  of  the  prelates  rather  than  the  fables  of 
superstitious  women.  For  if  we  are  at  last  through  our  own  faults 
arrived  at  the  point  where  witches  falsely  prophesying  in  God's  name 
but  without  His  authority,  are  better  received  by  the  frivolous  people 
than  pastors  and  doctors  of  the  Church  to  whom  Christ  formerly  said, 
'Go  ye  and  teach  the  nations',  the  end  is  come,  religion  will  perish,  faith 
is  in  decay,  the  Church  is  trampled  underfoot  and  the  iniquity  of 
Satan  dominates  the  whole  world. 

This  fairly  sums  up  the  case  for  Theocracy;  nor  is  it  without  sub- 
stance. To  begin  with,  the  statement  that  a  general  tendency  to  listen 

'  The  Trial  of  Jeanne  d'Arc.  Trans,  and  ed.  by  W.   P.  Barrett.   London,   1931.  pp. 
328-329. 

-  Barrett,  op.  cit.  p.  307. 


150  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

to  individual  thinkers  rather  than  to  the  accepted  doctrine  would 
mean  the  end  of  the  Church  is  manifestly  true.  That  is  exactly  what 
happened,  and  more  especially  in  France.  It  is  true  again  that  many  of 
the  'modern  inventions'  were  silly  or  even  harmful.  Nor  can  it  be 
denied  that  reported  miracles  are  likely  to  be  investigated  more 
competently  by  theologians  than  by  ignorant  peasants.  As  against 
that,  there  seems  to  many  people,  and  indeed  to  many  Christians,  a 
certain  divergence  between  the  example  given  by  Christ  and  the  ex- 
ample made  by  his  followers  in  the  market  place  of  Rouen  in  1431. 
In  concluding,  as  they  did,  that  the  end  of  the  world  was  at  hand, 
the  doctors  of  the  University  of  Paris  were  not  far  from  the  truth.  The 
end  of  their  world  was  indeed  approaching.  But  it  would  be  utterly 
wrong  to  assume  that  the  history  of  European  Theocracy  ends  with 
the  Reformation.  Religious  persecution  continued  in  its  Protestant 
guise  and  indeed  continues  still.  Its  essence  is  still  what  it  has  always 
been;  government  in  accordance  with  doctrines  which  those  governed 
may  not  share.  Charge  III  in  the  indictment  of  St.  Joan  read  'That  this 
woman  is  apostate,  for  the  hair  which  God  gave  her  for  a  veil  she  has 
untimely  cut  off,  and  also,  with  the  same  design  has  rejected  woman's 
dress  and  imitated  the  costume  of  men'.  In  the  London  of  to-day  it  is 
natural  for  any  intelligent  person  to  wonder  whether  St.  Joan's 
offence,  on  this  particular  charge,  might  not  have  been  less  than 
capital.  But  laws  as  fantastic  are  everywhere  being  enforced  and 
supported  by  arguments  which  are  just  as  absurd.  To  marry  a  second 
wife  in  England  is  as  much  an  offence  as  to  drink  wine  in  Pakistan — 
or,  at  one  time,  in  the  United  States.  To  buy  a  lottery  ticket  is  per- 
fectly proper  in  a  Muslim  state  but  is  illegal  in  the  British  colony 
adjacent.  A  Chinese  gambling  game  is  stopped  by  a  British  police 
officer  who  then  goes  on  to  play  bridge  at  his  Club.  To  smoke  tobacco 
is  innocent,  to  smoke  opium  is  a  crime.  The  book  that  is  compulsory 
reading  in  one  country  is  promptly  seized  and  burnt  in  the  next.  All 
states  are  still  theocratic  in  so  far  as  their  laws  are  based  upon  a 
revealed  religion  and  not  upon  principles  of  reason.  The  extent  to 
which  this  is  so  is  shown  by  the  divergence  of  the  laws  themselves.  In 
so  far  as  they  are  reasonable,  they  are  mostly  alike  as  between  one 
State  and  another.  In  so  far  as  they  differ  completely  they  are  based  on 
revealed  religion.  For  the  revelations  of  the  divine  will  presented  to 
mankind  by  those  apparently  inspired,  while  all  impressive  in  their 
own  way,  have  shown  little  resemblance  to  each  other. 


CHAPTER    XII 

The  Theocracy  of  Commimism 


IF  the  political  characteristics  of  Theocracy  are  to  include  a  Founder, 
a  Mythology,  a  Sacred  Book,  a  Priesthood,  a  place  of  pilgrimage 
and  an  Inquisition,  Communism  must  be  ranked  among  the  great 
religions  of  the  world.  There  are  some  who  will  object  that  a  religion 
implies  a  god.  There  is  enough,  perhaps,  in  this  objection  to  justify 
allotting  Communism  a  chapter  to  itself.  There  is  not,  clearly,  reason 
sufficient  to  exclude  it  from  the  list  of  religions.  For  Buddhism  was 
founded  by  a  thinker  who  certainly  believed  in  no  god  within  the 
comprehension  of  his  disciples.  He  might  have  believed  in  something 
akin  to  the  Life  Force  as  revered  by  George  Bernard  Shaw.  But  that 
did  not  prevent  him  founding  a  religion,  with  sects  and  heresies  and 
biblical  criticism.  For  lack  of  any  god  in  which  he  believed,  his 
followers  simply  made  a  god  of  him.  There  is  therefore  no  reason  to 
suppose  that  the  deified  Lenin  will  not  be  the  god  of  Communism. 
For  the  atheist  becoming  a  god  there  is  ample  precedent  already. 

While,  however.  Communism  would  seem  to  be  a  nascent  or  actual 
religion,  it  is  not  a  creed  of  great  importance  in  the  history  of 
political  thought;  and  this  is  due,  in  the  main,  to  the  circumstances  of 
its  origin.  Karl  Marx,  founder  of  the  creed,  was  born  at  Trier  in 
Rhenish  Prussia  in  1818.  The  son  of  a  Jewish  lawyer  who  turned 
Protestant  in  1824,  he  studied  jurisprudence,  history  and  philosophy 
at  Bonn,  graduating  in  1841  after  submitting  his  doctoral  thesis  on 
the  philosophy  of  Epicurus.  His  revotutionary  and  atheistic  ideas 
prevented  him  from  becoming  a  lecturer  at  Bonn  but  allowed  him  to 
marry  Jenny  von  Westphalen,  sister  of  the  Prussian  Minister  of  the 
Interior.  Marx  then  went  to  Paris  where  he  became  close  friends  with 
Frederick  Engels.  He  was  deported  from  France  in  1845  and  joined 
the  Communist  League  in  Belgium.  He  was  in  France  again  during 
the  revolution  of  1848  but  then  returned  to  Germany,  where  he  edited 
a  newspaper  until  banished  again  in  1849.  He  then  took  refuge  in 
London  and  lived  there  until  his  death  in  1883.  Most  of  his  writing 
was  done  after  1850  and  in  the  reading  room  of  the  British  Museum, 
Das  Kapital  being  unfinished  when  he  died.  He  and  his  wife  lived  in 
two  rooms  in  Dean  Street,^  where  they  had  six  children  of  whom  three 

'  This  was  not  Marx's  only  address.  Bv  1 88 1  he  was  living  at  41,  Maitland  Park  Road, 
N.W. 

151 


152  THE    EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

(all  daughters)  survived.  He  lived  upon  an  allowance  of  £350  a  year 
from  Engels,  a  legacy  of  £800  and  an  occasional  sovereign  for  an 
article  in  the  New  York  Tribune.  Marx  lived  at  his  desk,  knew  little  of 
practical  affairs  and  less  of  the  working  class  he  sought  to  befriend. 
After  thirty  years  in  London  he  still  lived  among  German  exiles, 
knowing  nothing  about  England  or  the  English.  He  had  all  the  single- 
minded  purpose  of  a  Hebrew  prophet  (which  is  what  he  was)  and 
ruthlessly  sacrificed  his  wife  and  family,  friends  and  disciples.  He  had 
an  abstract  pity  for  the  poor  but  his  capacity  for  hatred  was  more 
obvious  than  his  capacity  for  affection. 

So  much  biography  is  essential  to  fix  the  date  and  background  of 
his  work.  Marxism  may  sound  contemporary  as  a  doctrine  but  Marx 
himself  lived  in  the  world  of  Dickens,  Wellington  and  Queen  Victoria. 
His  was  a  background  of  top-hats,  frock-coats  and  horse-drawn 
carriages.  He  lived  long  ago,  making  prophecies  which,  whether 
proved  or  disproved,  are  no  longer  predictions.  Much  has  happened 
since  his  time,  including  two  world  wars  and  several  industrial 
revolutions,  the  lengthening  of  human  life  by  about  ten  years  and  the 
invention  of  contrivances  which  may  well  extinguish  human  society 
altogether;  or,  anyway,  the  civilisation  of  which  Karl  Marx  was  the 
rather  bilious  product.  Much  can  be  claimed  for  Marx  as  a  thinker, 
a  prophet,  and  a  personality.  But  there  is  one  thing  which  no  one  can 
claim.  No  one  can  now  regard  his  ideas  as  new. 

His  ideas  are  older  even  than  the  dates  of  his  career  would  suggest. 
For  he  was  not,  in  his  Dean  Street  period,  trying  to  discover  the  laws 
of  economics.  He  had  decided  in  advance  what  he  was  trying  to  prove. 
His  views  are  already  outlined  in  the  Communist  Manifesto  of  1847-8, 
which  he  helped  to  compile.^  He  began  writing  Das  Kapital  in  1867 
but  to  prove  theories  he  had  accepted  in  1845  or  earlier.  Das  Kapital 
remains  the  text-book  of  communist  economic  thought.  There  are, 
however,  few  other  subjects  in  which  the  student  is  given  a  text-book 
begun  in  1867  and  embodying  theories  dating  from  1845.  Nor, 
incidentally,  does  Marx  quite  manage  to  achieve  a  scientific  im- 
partiality. The  violence  of  the  sedentary  philosopher  breaks  out  when 
he  interrupts  his  economic  argument  with  words  like  these:  'The 
expropriation  of  the  immediate  producers  was  accomplished  with 
merciless  vandalism,  and  under  the  stimulus  of  passions  the  most 
infamous,  the  most  sordid,  the  pettiest,  the  most  meanly  odious'. 
Surely  a  consistent  materialist  would  have  seen  these  sordid  passions 
as  mere  obedience  to  the  economic  laws  by  which  all  are  governed? 
And  if  we  are  to  use  words  like  'infamous'  about  people  who  are 
'merciless',  we  must  have  some  moral  standards  by  which  to  judge 

'  Social-Economic  Movements.  H.  W.  Laidler.  London,  1948.  (International  Library 
of  Sociology  and  Social  Reconstruction).  Chapter  14.  pp.  130-144. 


THE     THEOCRACY     OF     COMMUNISM  153 

them.  But  moral  (that  is,  reUgious)  standards  are  bourgeois  ana- 
chronisms in  which  Marx  could  not  possibly  believe. 

Das  Kapital  is  not,  therefore,  comparable  with  any  scientific 
textbook.  It  has  been  called  'The  Bible  of  the  Working  Man',  an 
expression  which  gives  a  clue  to  its  nature,  it  should  rather  be  com- 
pared with  the  Bible,  the  Koran  or  the  Analects.  It  is  only  religious 
texts  that  never  go  out  of  date.  But  if  it  is  a  religion  that  we  have  to 
study,  we  shall  have  to  distinguish  between  the  doctrine  taught  by 
the  Founder  and  the  Theology  evolved  since  by  his  admirers.  Thus  we 
have,  in  Marxism,  the  Bible  of  Orthodoxy  which  none  may  contra- 
dict. We  have  the  priests  who  preach  on  selected  passages.  We  have 
the  scholars  who  wrangle  over  the  interpretation.  We  have  all  the 
early  intolerance  of  Christianity  and  all  the  early  fanaticism  of 
Islam.  There  is  an  Inquisition  to  deal  with  heretics  just  as  Christians 
have  dealt  with  their  own  deviationists  in  the  past.  After  this  process 
the  Marxism  practised  may  have  only  a  theoretical  relationship  to  the 
original  doctrine.  The  legends,  literature,  customs  and  ritual  built  up 
round  the  Founder's  memory  must  always  tend  to  obscure  what  he 
actually  taught. 

Marxist  doctrine,  if  we  omit  for  the  present  what  is  not  vital  to 
the  argument,  centres  upon  the  philosophy  of  dialectical  materialism, 
the  Marxist  view  of  History  and  the  Marxist  doctrine  of  revolution. 
The  materialist  believes  that  the  only  world  is  that  which  we  perceive 
with  our  senses  and  that  our  ideas  are  only  a  reflection  of  what  we 
perceive.  The  idea  of  'Dialectics'  is  borrowed  frorn  Darwin  and 
applied  by  Marx  to  society.  According  to  this  theory  nature  and 
society  are  in  the  midst  of  a  dynamic  evolutionary  development. 
This  evolution  is  by  a  process  of  conflict,  contradiction  or  struggle 
between  two  opposing  forces  or  ideas;  collision  between  which 
produces  something  different  from  either.  Thus,  Private  Property 
(the  Thesis)  conflicts  with  the  Proletariat  (the  Antithesis)  to  produce 
the  Abolition  of  Property  and  Class  (the  Synthesis).  This  may  not 
seem  immediately  helpful  but  it  reminds  us  of  one  advantage  that 
Marx  had  and  which  previous  thinkers  had  lacked.  The  Origin  of 
Species  appeared  in  1859  and  Marx  had  read  it.  More  than  that,  he 
grasped  its  implications.  Whereas  most  theoretical  writers  had  de- 
cided (like  Plato)  on  an  ideal  organization  of  society,  towards  which 
men  should  strive,  Marx  realised  that  its  organization  could  not  be 
static.  However  originally  fixed,  it  would  evolve.  What  he  was  seeking 
to  discover  was  not  a  final  and  frozen  state  of  achievement  but  the 
laws  which  would  govern  the  expected  development.  Marx  was  to 
that  extent  thinking  on  modern  lines. 

To  come  now  to  the  Marxist  interpretation  of  history,  Marx  held 
that  all   ideological   and   political   ideas  are  rooted   in   material   or 


154  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

economic  circumstances.  The  current  moral  and  ethical  ideas  may  be 
honestly  held  (and  a  few  individuals  may  even  preach,  ineffectually, 
the  opposite  point  of  view)  but  they  are  based,  in  fact,  on  economic 
interests.  It  follows  that  all  the  conflicts  recorded  in  history — what- 
ever their  pretext — were  conflicts  over  material  wealth.  In  the  words 
of  the  manifesto:  'The  history  of  all  known  society,  past  and  present, 
has  been  the  history  of  class  struggles'.  This  theory  is  pursued  back  to 
the  Middle  Ages  when  a  dissatisfied  merchant  class  used  the  idea  of 
nationalism  to  lessen  the  power  of  nobility,  church  and  Pope.  The 
Reformation — to  follow  the  argument — intensified  the  process;  from 
which  period  the  merchant  class  or  bourgeoisie  went  on  to  abolish, 
or  reduce  to  impotence,  the  monarchy  as  well.  Politically  secure,  the 
bourgeoisie  could  then  multiply  its  wealth  by  successive  revolutions 
in  agriculture,  commerce  and  industry.  The  result  is  a  Capitalist 
Society,  defended  by  parliamentary  rule.  But  the  Capitalist  Society 
has  an  inward  tendency  by  which  profits  fall  unless  sustained  by 
further  mechanisation,  by  the  exploitation  of  new  markets  or  by  a 
change  in  the  scale  of  industry — the  smaller  capitalists  being 
absorbed  by  the  greater.  So  the  rich  become  richer  and  fewer,  the 
proletariat  poorer  and  larger  until  the  tyranny  of  the  few  becomes 
absurd.  Revolution  follows,  as  a  result  of  which  the  proletariat 
seizes  power.  This  sequence  is  inevitable  and  invariable  and  can  end 
in  no  other  way.  The  dictatorship  of  the  proletariat  is  bound  to  come. 
There  is  substance  in  this  argument  as  an  analysis,  from  one  point 
of  view,  of  the  history  which  Karl  Marx  had  studied.  We  should, 
however,  beware  of  concluding  that  any  one  scholarly  interpretation 
of  history  is  truer  than  any  other.  History  can  be  looked  at  from  a 
variety  of  angles — the  political,  the  religious,  the  medical,  the  legal, 
the  scientific  and  the  cultural  (to  name  no  others) — and  the  difference 
between  the  resulting  books  lies  in  their  authors'  approach.  Thus  the 
same  object  can  be  viewed  from  different  directions,  from  near  at 
hand  or  from  far  away.  It  is  needless  to  argue  about  the  merits  of  the 
different  viewpoints.  They  all  give  us  an  aspect  of  truth.  No  sensible 
historian  will  maintain  that  his  point  of  view  is  the  only  one  that 
matters.  He  may  consider,  however  (and  he  probably  will)  that  too 
few  people  have  appreciated  the  merits  of  his  viewpoint.  He  may  also 
believe  (and  invariably  does)  that  certain  other  historians  are  cross- 
eyed, colour-blind  and  afflicted  with  cataract  in  both  eyes.  He  will 
sympathise  with  them  publicly  about  their  ailments  and  disabilities 
but  he  will  not  argue  that  their  standpoint  is  an  impossible  one.  The 
truth  was  there  for  them  to  see  but  it  just  so  happened  that  they 
were — for  all  practical  purposes — blind.  Should  a  scholar  write  a 
history  of  civilisation  solely  in  terms  of  plumbing,  high  explosives  or 
venereal  disease,  we  should  not  seek  to  belittle  his  work  on  that 


THE     THEOCRACY     OF     COMMUNISM  155 

account.  He  has  a  right  to  his  own  point  of  view.  In  exactly  the  same 
way,  any  sane  scholar  will  find  much  that  is  valuable  in  the  economic 
interpretation  of  history.  But  when  some  enthusiastic  person  seizes 
upon  this  one  aspect  and  flatly  denies  that  there  is  any  other,  the 
historian  will  regard  him  as  an  amateur;  a  man  who  has  read  one 
book  and  found  in  it  the  whole  truth  of  the  universe.  And  an 
amateur  is  exactly  what  Karl  Marx  was. 

What  else  could  he  be?  He  spent,  it  is  true,  many  years  of  study 
but  during  a  period  when  there  was  all  too  little  for  him  to  read.  We 
have  seen  that  his  major  advantage,  as  a  political  thinker,  lay  in  his 
knowledge  of  the  theory  of  evolution.  But  we  do  not  suppose  that  he 
(or  Darwin  for  that  matter)  knew  more  than  a  fraction  of  what  is 
known  to-day.  Biology,  like  Physics  and  Chemistry,  has  progressed 
rather  dramatically  since  1883;  as  most  people  probably  realise. 
Fewer,  perhaps,  will  realise  that  the  study  of  History  has  progressed 
as  much.  Karl  Marx  could  read  Ranke,  Treitschke,  Guizot  and 
Thiers,  but  the  systematic  study  of  history  in  England  had  hardly 
begun.  In  1847,  the  date  by  which  his  main  theory  had  been  formed, 
Stubbs  was  aged  22  and  Cunningham  and  Maitland  were  not  yet  born. 
Gardiner  began  to  publish  his  History  of  the  English  Revolution  in 
1863,  Stubbs  his  Constitutional  History  in  1874.  The  first  volume  of 
Lecky's  History  of  England  in  the  \Sth  Century  appeared  in  1878  and 
Cunningham's  Growth  of  English  Industry  and  Commerce  in  1882. 
The  English  Historical  Review  published  its  first  number  in  1886 
(after  Marx  had  died).  Marx  was  also  dead  before  F.  W.  Maitland  had 
the  Downing  Chair  at  Cambridge,  before  Freeman  took  the  Chair  at 
Oxford  and  long  before  the  publication  of  the  History  of  English  Law. 
The  Oxford  School  of  History  was  not  even  separated  from  that  of 
Law  until  1872,  nor  Sir  J.  R.  Seeley  appointed  Regius  Professor  at 
Cambridge  until  1869. 

History  has  progressed,  in  fact,  since  1847  and  progressed  still 
more  since  the  turn  of  the  century.  It  has  moved  backwards  into  pre- 
history, forward  into  the  events  which  have  happened  since  Marx's 
death,  outwards  into  Oriental  and  American  fields  hitherto  uncharted 
and  inwards  into  the  history  of  science  of  which  we  have  so  far 
scarcely  scratched  the  surface.  Marx  tries,  in  effect,  to  formulate  a 
general  rule  from  a  single  example.  Whereas  we  have  evidence  of 
civilisations  rising  and  falling  over  a  period  of  some  30,000  years, 
Marx  rests  his  economic  theory  on  an  analysis  of  about  500  years  of 
one  civiHsation;  and  his  analysis  ante-dates  the  very  beginnings  of 
economic  history  as  a  serious  field  of  study. 

If  Karl  Marx  based  his  prophecy  on  a  too  narrow  range  of  facts, 
there  is  a  fallacy  implicit  in  the  prophecy  itself.  This  might  be  called 
the  fallacy  of  the  three  Weird  Sisters.  They  hailed  Macbeth,  it  will  be 


156  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

remembered,  as  Thane  of  Glamis,  as  Thane  of  Cawdor  and  as 
'King  hereafter'.  This  last  prediction  had  for  Macbeth  the  credibiUty 
attaching  to  a  third  prophesy  when  two  have  proved  correct.  But  the 
first  told  him  nothing  but  what  he  and  they  and  everyone  knew.  The 
second  told  him  of  something  which  had  already  taken  place  but  of 
which  they  had  prior  information.  The  third  prophecy  has  therefore 
to  stand  alone,  a  mere  assertion,  unsupported  by  any  previously 
successful  forecast.  Marx  argues  that  because  a  merchant  class  or 
aristocracy  seizes  power  from  a  nobility,  monarchy  and  church,  it 
will  diminish  in  size  through  the  operation  of  economic  laws  until  it 
becomes  vulnerable  to  the  lower-class  revolt  which  he  regards  as 
inevitable.  But  this  does  not  follow.  For  one  thing,  the  tendency  for 
industry  to  concentrate  may  be  paralleled  by  the  tendency  of  an 
aristocracy  to  disperse  and  so  widen  the  governing  class.  For  another 
thing,  Marx  does  not  allow  for  the  eflfect  of  his  own  and  other  similar 
predictions.  Whereas  his  admirers  could  agree  to  hasten  the  result 
which  Marx  thought  in  any  case  certain,  his  opponents  might  take 
steps  to  avert  a  result  which  they  could  regard  as,  at  any  rate,  possible. 
Apart  from  that,  we  can  now  better  assess  the  prophecy  of  1847  in 
the  light  of  all  that  has  occurred  since.  There  was  good  reason  for 
expecting  revolutions  in  1847  and  one  such  revolution  actually  took 
place.  Tension  afterwards  lessened  and  the  various  Socialist  groups 
(the  First  International,  as  their  organisation  has  since  been  called) 
made  little  progress.  In  fact,  those  who  upheld  Marx's  views  had  far 
more  influence  in  1848  than  they  were  to  have  in  1860-80,  a  period  of 
less  potential  disorder.  The  revolution  which  Marx  expected  to  hap- 
pen in  Germany  seemed,  in  Bismark's  time,  extremely  remote.  The 
revolution  which  he  would  have  liked  to  see  in  Britain  was  as  im- 
probable but  for  a  different  reason.  For  most  of  the  English  Socialists 
turned  out  to  be  Methodists  and  similarly  pious  people  to  whom 
Materialism  (and  therefore  Marxism)  was  merely  irreligious. 

Marxism  appealed  mainly,  in  the  end,  to  Russian  revolutionaries. 
For  these  had  something  to  work  on;  a  discontented  people,  an 
intellectually  worried  and  conscience-stricken  aristocracy  and  an 
obsolete  medieval  form  of  government  which  no  other  European 
people  could  approve.  Except  in  Russia,  communism  mostly  died  out, 
to  be  revived  only  after  1917.  Russian  communists  mostly  lived 
outside  Russia  and  were  widely  tolerated,  either  because  they  were 
not  taken  seriously  or  because  of  the  dislike  felt  for  Tsarist  Russia  by 
all  European  liberals.  The  political  principles  upon  which  Tsarist 
government  was  founded  were  Autocracy,  Nationality  and  Ortho- 
doxy. The  political  methods  for  which  Russia  was  noted  involved  the 
constant  use  of  secret  police,  spies,  informers,  torture  and  Siberian 
exile.  There  are  said  to  have  been  3,282  executions,  after  trial,  be- 


THE     THEOCRACY     OF     COMMUNISM  157 

tween  1906  and  1913.  Neither  these  principles  nor  these  methods 
appealed  to  Queen  Victoria  or  Mr.  Gladstone.  They  seemed  then 
(they  even  seem  now)  essentially  wrong. 

Russian  revolutionaries  had,  therefore,  secure  bases  in  Europe 
from  which  to  organise  revolt  in  Russia.  But  what  sort  of  government 
was  to  take  the  place  of  the  one  they  meant  to  overthrow?  It  was  on 
this  subject  that  their  holy  scripture  was  least  helpful.  Karl  Marx  had 
very  little  to  say  about  politics  as  such.  He  merely  asserted  that  the 
proletariat,  once  in  power  and  having  no  other  class  to  rule  and 
subdue,  would  find  politics  needless  and  the  State  itself  unnecessary. 
Meanwhile,  until  the  State  'withers  away',  there  must  presumably  be 
government  of  some  kind.  Marx  apparently  envisaged  his  proletarian 
dictatorship  as  centring  on  a  Commune  or  Communal  Council, 
having  both  legislative  and  executive  functions  and  based  upon  a 
universal  franchise.  It  is  clear  that  his  proletariat  will  abolish  all 
standing  military  forces,  all  offices  that  are  not  elective  and  all 
churches — or,  anyway,  all  religious  endowments.  Negatively,  the 
Marxist  programme  is  fairly  complete.  We  know  little  of  Marx's 
more  constructive  ideas  on  the  political  side.  As  for  the  State 
'withering  away',  Marxist  doctrine  makes  actual  revolution  essential 
to  progress;  and  the  military  or  semi-military  leadership  needed  for 
a  successful  revolt  seems,  in  practice,  easier  to  introduce  than  to 
terminate.  Apart  from  that,  Marx  had  perhaps  hardly  understood  the 
political  implications  of  his  own  creed.  For,  granted  that  industrial 
combines  would  become  larger  and  larger,  as  he  said  they  would  and 
as  they  did,  the  organisations  built  up  could  only  be  taken  over 
(after  the  revolution)  by  the  State.  Marx  was  no  machine-wrecker,  no 
William  Morris  or  G.  K.  Chesterton.  He  neither  wanted  nor  expected 
to  see  the  last  capitalist  hurled  into  the  blazing  ruins  of  the  last  factory. 
Granted,  however,  that  the  factories  were  to  remain  after  the  capi- 
talists had  all  been  hanged,  they  would  obviously  be  nationalised. 
And  how  could  a  State  controlling  whole  industries  be  expected  to 
'wither  away'?  And  what  would  happen  to  the  industries  if  it  did? 

Karl  Marx  was  not  a  fool  and  the  clue  to  the  absurdity  of  his 
political  idealism  lies  mainly  in  the  period  from  which  it  dates.  To  a 
man  born  at  Trier  in  1818,  graduating  at  Bonn  in  1841,  the  idea  of 
industry  on  the  modern  scale  was  altogether  alien.  His  was  the  back- 
ground of  the  Rhineland,  the  vineyards  and  the  little  German  towns. 
It  was  easy  for  him  to  picture  a  revolution  in  which  large  capitalists — 
the  biggest  tradesmen  in  each  town — were  eliminated.  It  was  easy 
for  him  to  imagine,  in  his  bucolic  surroundings,  how  groups  of 
peasants  and  workers  could  then  run  industries  for  themselves.  Given 
the  disappearance  of  war,  foreign  relations,  church  and  king,  no 
political  functions  would  remain;  none,  at  least,  beyond  the  capacity 


158  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

of  a  socialistic  town  council.  He  hardly  realised  the  implications  of 
the  railway;  and  the  growth  of  industries  as  we  know  them  did  not 
begin  until  about  1870.  Had  he  foreseen  the  scale  of  modern  industry, 
he  would  not  have  assumed  that  the  State  could  'wither  away'.  He 
would  have  known  that  it  would  have  economic  functions  even  if  it 
had  no  other.  And  he  might,  in  that  case,  have  paid  a  little  more 
attention  to  the  political  aftermath  of  the  revolution  he  wished  to 
bring  about.  As  it  was,  his  political  ideas  scarcely  progress  beyond 
the  lamp-post  on  which  the  last  capitalist  is  to  be  hanged.  From  the 
moment  when  they  overthrew  the  Tsar  his  Russian  admirers  had  no 
further  help  from  Marx.  They  were  left  to  work  out  the  problem  for 
themselves  and  their  solution  was  the  simplest  imaginable.  They 
gave  Russia  almost  exactly  the  same  government  as  it  had  had  before. 

This  result  was  partly  due  to  the  character  of  the  Russian  Marxists 
and  partly  to  the  nature  of  the  problem  they  were  left  to  solve.  Their 
party  had  grown  up  in  conspiratorial  fashion  in  an  atmosphere  of 
danger,  suspicion  and  fear  of  betrayal.  They  developed  the  strict 
party  discipline  that  was  essential  for  safety.  They  developed  a 
fanatical  adherence  to  the  word  of  Karl  Marx,  whose  writings  were 
as  important  to  them  as  was  the  Talmud  to  the  exiled  Jews.  Many 
of  them,  incidentally,  were  in  fact  Jewish,  like  Marx  himself.  They  had 
a  tendency,  Jewish  again,  to  quarrel  over  the  exact  interpretation  of 
biblical  texts.  When  the  Tsarist  government  collapsed  during  the 
First  World  War,  the  small  Communist  Party  was  disciplined 
enough  and  quick  enough  to  seize  power  during  the  disorders  which 
followed.  Their  power  was  consolidated  by  external  dangers  against 
which  a  party  leader  could  appeal  to  nationalist  sentiment.  The 
result  was  that  their  Autocracy  (of  the  party  chief),  their  Nationalism 
(as  defenders  of  Russia)  and  their  Orthodoxy  (as  Marxists)  repro- 
duced the  main  principles,  and  encouraged  them  to  adopt  the  same 
methods,  as  the  government  they  had  overturned. 

This  is  the  more  comprehensible  when  we  remember  that  their 
problem  was  the  same.  Soviet  Russia  comprised,  even  in  its  early 
days,  8i  million  square  miles,  nearly  ^th  of  the  earth's  surface;  an 
area  larger  than  the  United  States  and  China  together.  Distances 
ranged  up  to  5,000  miles  from  East  to  West,  and  almost  3,000  miles 
from  North  to  South.  The  population  was  nearly  192,000,000  in  1939, 
comprising  Russians,  White  Russians,  Ukrainians,  Armenians, 
Georgians,  Jews,  Turkemans,  Mongolians,  Germans  and  Finns, 
with  some  seventy  languages  spoken  and  taught.  Most  of  these 
people  were  backward,  illiterate,  irresponsible  and  feckless.  To 
govern  a  country  so  much  larger  than  Europe  or  the  United  States  is 
a  formidable  task.  It  could  not,  in  any  case,  be  governed  in  the  same 
way  as  England  or  New  Zealand.  It  must  be  a  federation,  to  begin 


THE    THEOCRACY     OF     COMMUNISM  159 

with,  like  the  United  States.  But  to  maintain  a  unity  among  peoples 
so  numerous,  scattered,  diverse  and  backward  is  the  task  for  a  god, 
not  for  a  man.  Such  a  federation  can  be  held  together  only  by  the 
same  means  as  adopted  in  ancient  Egypt  or  China;  by  a  State 
Religion,  a  Priesthood  and  a  Deified  Emperor.  That  was  what  Russia 
had  before  and  it  was  what  Russia  was  to  have  again.  But  even  that 
would  not  suffice  without  bringing  to  bear  upon  the  problem  all  the 
devotion  of  the  Jesuits,  all  the  fanaticism  of  Islam  and  all  the  cal- 
culated cruelty  of  the  Tsarist  police.  All  this  too  might  fail  without  a 
continual  foreign  threat  and  pressure  which  has  to  be  invented  when 
it  does  not  exist. ^ 

What  has  been  called  'the  dropping  of  the  Utopian  element  in 
Marxism"'  would  have  been  inevitable  in  any  Socialist  State  much 
larger  than  a  village.  In  a  country  like  Russia  the  idea  of  the  State 
'withering  away'  could  not  last  five  minutes.  So  far  from  'withering 
away'  the  State  in  Russia  has  become  more  powerful,  more  complex, 
more  inescapable  than  in  any  other  country  in  the  world.  The  Consti- 
tution of  the  Union  of  Soviet  Socialist  Republics  (as  amended  in 
1947)'^  comprises  146  Articles,  refers  to  sixteen  different  Republics, 
a  Supreme  Soviet  with  two  Chambers,  a  Presidium  with  sixteen  Vice- 
Presidents,  Credentials  Committees,  a  Council  of  Ministers,  thirty- 
six  all-Union  Ministries,  twenty-three  Union-Republican  Ministries, 
a  Supreme  Court,  a  Procurator-General,  and  the  Soviets  of  territories, 
regions,  autonomous  regions,  areas,  districts,  cities  and  rural  locali- 
ties. As  the  Union-Republican  central  Ministries  are  all  represented 
again  by  corresponding  Ministries  in  each  of  the  sixteen  Republics, 
and  as  there  are  separate  Ministries  of  Internal  Affairs,  State  Control, 
State  Security  and  Justice,  there  would  seem  to  be  fcvv  signs  of  the 
'withering  away'  process  as  yet.  The  mind  rather  reels  when  con- 
fronted by  the  mere  list  of  executive  and  legislative  bodies.  Elections 
are  innumerable,  the  citizen  taking  part  severally  as  an  inhabitant, 
a  producer,  a  consumer  and  possibly  as  a  party-member  as  well.  The 
whole  structure  is  more  elaborate  even  than  that  of  the  United 
States  and  with  full  rights  guaranteed  for  everyone — freedom  of 
speech,  freedom  of  the  press,  freedom  to  vote,  freedom  of  assembly 
and  freedom  of  association.  The  suffrage  is  universal,  eqiaal,  direct 
and  secret.  The  constitutional  structure  of  the  U.S.S.R.  could  not  be 
more  democratic  in  principle.  It  is  perceptibly  less  democratic  in 
practice. 

When   announcing  the   Constitution   of   1936,   Joseph   Stalin   is 

As  Karl  Marx  wrote  in  1853:  'There  is  only  one  way  to  deal  with  a  Power  like  Russia, 
and  that  is  the  fearless  way.'  The  Russian  Menace  to  Europe.  Ed.  by  P.  W.  Blackstock 
and  B.  F.  Hoselity.  Illinois,  1952.  p.  269. 

-  The  Spirit  of  Post-war  Russia.  Rudolf  Schlesinger.  London,  1947.  p.  180. 

'An  Introduction  to  Russian  History  and  Culture.  Ivar  Spector.  New  York,  1949. 
Appendix,  p.  41 1. 


160  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

reported  as  saying  'I  must  admit  the  draft  of  a  new  Constitution  really 
does  leave  in  force  the  regime  of  the  dictatorship  of  the  working  class, 
and  also  leaves  unchanged  the  present  leading  position  of  the 
Communist  party  of  the  U.S.S.R.'^  We  may  take  his  word  for  it.  But 
we  must  also  be  clear  in  our  minds  about  what  that  'leading  position' 
amounts  to.  It  was  created,  in  the  first  instance,  by  Lenin,  and  ante- 
dates all  the  democratic  machinery  of  government.  When  Bertrand 
Russell  met  Lenin  in  1920,  he  found  it  difficult  at  first  to  see  him  as 
other  than  commonplace. 

I  think  if  1  had  met  him  without  knowing  who  he  was,  I  should  not 
have  guessed  that  he  was  a  great  man;  he  struck  me  as  too  opinionated 
and  narrowly  orthodox.  His  strength  comes,  I  imagine,  from  his 
honesty,  courage,  and  unwavering  faith — religious  faith  in  the  Marxian 
gospel,  which  takes  the  place  of  the  Christian  martyr's  hopes  of  Para- 
dise, except  that  it  is  less  egotistical.  He  has  as  little  love  of  liberty  as 
the  Christians  who  suffered  under  Diocletian,  and  retaliated  when  they 
acquired  power.  Perhaps  love  of  liberty  is  incompatible  with  whole- 
hearted belief  in  a  panacea  for  all  human  ills.- 

Lenin's  strength  of  character  lay,  no  doubt,  in  the  qualities  which 
Bertrand  Russell  imagined  him  to  possess.  His  political  strength, 
however,  lay  in  his  firm  refusal  to  take  the  easy  way.  From  1900 
onwards  he  must  have  been  almost  overwhelmingly  tempted  to  accept 
whatever  recruits  that  came.  He  refused  instead  to  have  any  that  he 
could  not  trust.  As  Sidney  and  Beatrice  Webb  pointed  out: 

.  .  .  Lenin  had  no  use,  within  the  Party,  for  mere  sympathisers,  for 
partially  converted  disciples,  for  adherents  who  based  their  acts  on 
Christianity  or  a  general  humanitarianism,  or  on  any  other  theory  of 
social  life  than  Marxism,  nor  even  for  those  whose  interpretation  of 
Marxism  differed  from  his  own.  .  .  .  For  the  instrument  of  revolution 
that  he  was  forging  he  needed  ...  a  completely  united,  highly  dis- 
ciplined and  relatively  small  body  of 'professional  revolutionists',  who 
should  not  only  have  a  common  creed  and  a  common  programme  but 
should  also  undertake  to  give  their  whole  lives  to  a  single  end.  .  .  .  The 
creation  of  such  a  body  was  no  easy  task.  In  interminable  controversies 
between  1900  and  1916,  we  watch  Lenin  driving  off  successively  all 
whom  he  could  not  persuade  to  accept  his  model;  all  whom  he  con- 
sidered compromisers  or  temporisers;  opportunists  or  reformists; 
half-converted  sympathisers  who  clung  to  one  or  other  form  of  mysti- 
cism for  which  Karl  Marx  had  found  no  place.  .  .  .^ 

When  the  Russian  Revolution  took  place,  the  party  members 
numbered   only   30,000  but  these  were  all   picked,   indoctrinated, 

'  Laidler.  op.  cil.  p.  423. 

"  The  Practice  and  Theory  of  Bolshevism.  Bertrand  Russell.  London,  1920.  p.  37. 
'  Soviet   Communism:   A   new  civilisation.   By   Sidney  and    Beatrice   Webb.   2   vols. 
London,  1937.  Vol.  I.  pp.  341-342. 


THE    THEOCRACY     OF     COMMUNISM  161 

tested  and  reliable.  And  it  was,  of  course,  Lenin's  exclusion  of  vaguely 
left-wing  idealists  which  made  Communism  a  rehgion,  incompatible 
with  any  other.  Membership  from  the  beginning  implied  rigid 
orthodoxy,  implicit  obedience,  austerity  of  life  and  willingness  to 
face  hard  work,  hardship  and  danger. 

The  Communist  who  sincerely  believes  the  party  creed  is  convinced 
that  private  property  is  the  root  of  all  evil ;  he  is  so  certain  of  this  that 
he  shrinks  from  no  measures,  however  harsh,  which  seem  necessary  for 
constructing  and  preserving  the  Communist  State.  He  spares  himself 
as  little  as  he  spares  others.  He  works  sixteen  hours  a  day,  and  foregoes 
his  Saturday  half-holiday.  He  volunteers  for  any  difficult  or  dangerous 
work  which  needs  to  be  done.  .  .  .  The  same  motives,  however,  which 
make  him  austere  make  him  also  ruthless.  Marx  has  taught  that 
Communism  is  fatally  predestined  to  come  about;  this  fits  in  with  the 
Oriental  traits  in  the  Russian  character,  and  produces  a  state  of  mind 
not  unlike  that  of  the  early  successors  of  Mahomet.  Opposition  is 
crushed  without  mercy.  .  .  .^ 

Party  membership  is  attractive,  therefore,  to  the  young  and 
fanatical,  to  the  austere  and  ardent,  to  those  with  a  sense  of  mission. 
It  does  not  attract  everybody  and  of  those  it  does  attract  many  are 
rejected  at  the  outset,  rejected  during  probation  or  'purged'  at  some 
later  stage.  During  the  period  1922-27  from  16,000  to  25,000  members 
were  expelled  each  year,  for  slackness,  dishonesty,  drunkenness  or 
similar  offences.'  Numbers,  therefore,  have  mounted  only  slowly. 
There  were  fewer  than  half  a  million  members  in  1920  and  only  two 
and  a  half  million  in  1939.  If  there  were  four  and  a  half  million  in 
1942,  the  membership  would  have  been  just  over  two  per  cent  of  the 
population.  Party  members  are  said  to  have  numbered  6,300,000  in 
1947  but  the  percentage  remains  low  and  the  policy  has  always  been 
to  keep  the  membership  exclusive.  Parallel  with  the  official  assemblies, 
the  Party  has  its  own  organisation,  with  local  Committees,  an  AU- 
Union  Congress,  a  Central  Committee  and  a  Political  Bureau 
(Politburo)  which  has  been  the  most  important  governing  body  in 
Russia.  The  Secretary-General  of  the  Party  was,  for  many  years, 
Joseph  Stalin,  and  this  was,  for  most  of  that  time,  the  only  office 
he  held. 

The  relationship  between  Party  and  State  has  been  defined  by 
Stalin  in  these  words: 

...  In  the  Soviet  Union,  in  the  land  where  the  dictatorship  of  the 
proletariat  is  in  force,  no  important  political  or  organizational 
problem  is  ever  decided  by  our  Soviets  and  other  mass  organizations, 
without  directives  from  our  Party.  In  this  sense,  we  may  say  that  the 

'  Bertrand  Russell,  op.  cit.  p.  27. 

-  Sidney  and  Beatrice  Webb.  op.  cit.  Vol.  1.  p.  375. 


162  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

dictatorship  of  the  proletariat  is  substantially  the  dictatorship  of  the 
Party,  as  the  force  which  effectively  guides  the  proletariat.^ 

This  admission  and  the  known  fact  that  the  vast  majority  of 
Ministers,  Deputies  and  Officials  are  in  fact  Party  members,  taking 
their  orders  from  the  Party,  justifies  us  in  classifying  this  form  of 
government  as  a  Theocracy.  It  has  sometimes  been  held  that  it  is, 
rather,  a  Dictatorship.  As  against  that,  Sidney  and  Beatrice  Webb 
concluded,  after  careful  investigation,  that  it  is  not. 

We  have  given  particular  attention  to  this  point,  collecting  all  the 
available  evidence,  and  noting  carefully  the  inferences  to  be  drawn 
from  the  experience  of  the  past  eight  years  (1926-1934).  We  do  not 
think  that  the  Party  is  governed  by  the  will  of  a  single  person;  or  that 
Stalin  is  the  sort  of  person  to  claim  or  desire  such  a  position.  He  has 
himself  very  explicitly  denied  any  such  personal  dictatorship  in  terms 
which,  whether  or  not  he  is  credited  with  sincerity,  certainly  accord 
with  our  own  impression  of  the  facts.- 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Stalin's  power  was  greater  during  the 
Second  World  War  but  the  same  would  be  true  of  Churchill  or 
Roosevelt.  Before  that  war,  Stalin  surely  exercised  something  far 
short  of  dictatorial  powers.  But  if  we  have  little  reason  for  concluding 
that  he  was  a  dictator,  we  have  ample  evidence  for  concluding  that 
he  was  a  god.  We  are  told  that,  when  Lenin  died: 

.  .  .  His  remains  were  interred  in  a  dark-red  granite  mausoleum  in  the 
Red  Square  of  Moscow,  which  is  backed  by  the  Kremlin  wall.  Three- 
quarters  of  a  million  people  waited  in  line  to  view  his  remains  for  an 
average  of  five  hours  in  an  arctic  cold  of  30  degrees  below  zero  before 
they  were  able  to  take  their  turn  in  passing  through  the  hall  where  he 
lay  in  state. ^ 

It  is  with  reference  to  this  deification  of  Lenin  that  the  Webbs 
were  able  to  explain  how  Stalin  in  turn  became  a  god.  It  was,  they 
explained,  because  the  party  leaders  deliberately  exploited  the 
traditional  Russian  reverence  for  a  personal  autocrat. 

.  .  .  This  was  seen  in  the  popular  elevation  of  Lenin,  notably  after  his 
death,  to  the  status  of  saint  or  prophet,  virtually  canonised  in  the 
sleeping  figure  in  the  sombre  mausoleum  in  Moscow's  Red  Square, 
where  he  is  now,  to  all  intents  and  purposes  worshipped  by  the  adoring 
millions  of  workers  and  peasants  who  daily  pass  before  him.  Lenin's 
works  have  become  'Holy  Writ',  which  may  be  interpreted,  but  which 
it  is  impermissible  to  confute.  After  Lenin's  death,  it  was  agreed  that 
his  place  could  never  be  filled.  But  some  new  personality  had  to  be 

^Leninism.  By  J.  Stalin.  VoL  L   1928.  p.  33.  QLioted  in  Soviet  Communism:  a  new 
civilisation.  By  Sidney  and  Beatrice  Webb.  London,  1937.  2nd  ed.  Vol.  L  pp.  430-431. 
-  Sidney  and  Beatrice  Webb.  op.  cit.  Vol.  L  p.  432. 
'  Laidier.  op.  cit.  p.  393. 


THE     THEOCRACY     OF     COMMUNISM  163 

produced  for  the  hundred  and  sixty  miUions  to  revere.  There  presently 
ensued  a  tacit  understanding  among  the  junta  that  Stalin  should  be 
'boosted'  as  the  supreme  leader  of  the  proletariat,  the  Party,  and  the 
state.  His  portrait  and  his  bust  were  accordingly  distributed  by  tens 
of  thousands,  and  they  are  now  everywhere  publicly  displayed  along 
with  those  of  Marx  and  Lenin. ^ 

As  a  potential  god,  Stalin  (the  atheist)  had  a  useful  qualification  in 
the  training  he  had  received  in  the  Theological  Seminary  of  Tiflis. 
He  at  least  must  have  understood  what  was  required  of  him  as  the 
third  person  of  a  Trinity  in  which  Marx  was  God  and  Lenin,  Christ. 
And  the  first  thing  expected  of  him  was  a  proper  reverence  for  the 
gods  senior  to  him. 

At  the  next  Congress  of  the  Soviets  after  Lenin's  death,  Stalin 
chanted  his  sacred  vow  in  the  name  of  the  revolution:  'Departing 
from  us.  Comrade  Lenin  bequeathed  to  us  the  duty  of  preserving  and 
strengthening  the  dictatorship  of  the  proletariat.  We  swear  to  thee. 
Comrade  Lenin,  that  we  will  not  spare  our  energies  in  also  fulfilling 
with  honor  this  thy  commandment  !'- 

Lenin  had  himself  ridiculed  and  detested  all  religion  as  'the 
thousand-year-old  enemy  of  culture  and  progress',  but  Stalin  now 
invoked  his  name  in  what  amounts  to  a  public  prayer.  He  addressed 
the  dead  man  as  if  he  were  still  there  in  spirit.  But  nothing  he  could 
say  about  the  dead  Lenin  could  surpass  what  was  soon  being  said 
about  himself,  reaching  a  crescendo  of  adulation  on  his  seventieth 
birthday  in  1949.  And  one  thing  apparent  from  all  that  was  said  is 
that  deification  actually  lessens  the  power  of  the  person  deified.  This 
was  true  of  the  god-kings  of  Egypt  and  it  remains  true  to-day.  The 
deified  king  is  imprisoned  by  his  own  legend,  restricted  by  the  ritual 
of  his  own  cult.  The  other  thing  apparent  is  that  the  king  is  deified 
by  his  subjects'  wish,  not  by  his  own.  Lenin  would  hardly  have 
accepted  worship  in  his  lifetime  but  he  was  powerless  to  save  his  dead 
body  from  the  adoration  of  the  naturally  religious.  As  for  Stalin,  he 
accepted  his  role  with  something  like  complacence.  Deification  begins 
with  good  publicity. 

.  .  .  The  same  heroic  pictures  of  Stalin  appeared  in  Moscow,  Prague, 
and  Peiping.  Always  the  image  of  the  Leader  was  sublimely  glorified. 
Edgar  Snow  says  he  counted  Stalin's  name  fifty-seven  times  in  one 
four-page  issue  of  a  Moscow  daily  even  at  the  height  of  the  paper 
shortage  in  World  War  IL  In  1950,  with  paper  more  plentiful,  one  issue 
oi  Pravda  mentioned  Stalin  91  times  on  the  front  page  alone;  35  times 
as  Josef  Vissarinovich  Stalin;  33  times  as  Comrade  Stalin;  10  times  as 
Great  Leader;  7  times  as  Dear  and  Beloved  Stalin:  and  6  times  as  Great 
Stalin.  The  Yugoslav  newspaper  which  did  this  bit  of  research  into  the 

>  S.  and  B.  Webb.  op.  cit.  p.  438. 

'  Communism,  Democracy  and  Catholic  Power.  Paul  Blanshard.  London,  1952.  p.  70. 


164  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

processes  of  deification  also  recorded  the  fact  that  Stalin  is  commonly 
described  elsewhere  in  the  Soviet  press  as  Great  Leader  of  Mankind; 
Great  Chief  of  All  Workers;  Protagonist  of  Our  Victories;  and  Faith- 
ful Fighter  for  the  Cause  of  Peace. ^ 

Stalin's  fiftieth  birthday  in  1929  called  forth  a  series  of  epithets 
comparable  with  those  applied  to  earlier  Asian  kings  (see  p.  135). 
Among  these  may  be  quoted  the  following:  The  greatest  military 
leader  of  all  times  and  nations,  Lenin's  Perpetuator  in  Creating  the 
Theory  of  the  Construction  of  Socialism,  The  Theoretician  and 
Leader  of  the  Fight  for  Peace  and  Brotherhood  among  the  Peoples, 
the  Military  Genius  of  our  Time,  Mirrored  in  the  Literature  of  the 
Peoples  of  the  World,  Teacher  and  Inspired  Leader  of  the  World 
Proletariat,  Coryphaeus  of  World  Science,  Theoretician  and  Initiator 
of  the  Transformation  of  Nature  in  the  U.S.S.R.,  the  People's 
Happiness,  Brilliant  thinker  and  scholar. 

Paul  Blanshard  has  also  been  at  pains  to  collect  certain  other 
literary  references  to  Stalin  which  are  as  significant  in  their  own  way. 

Father!  What  could  be  nearer  and  dearer  than  that  name? 

Multiform  is  the  all-compassing  power  of  Stalin's  genius.  Not  a  single 
field  of  the  creative  endeavors  of  the  Soviet  people  but  has  been 
illumined  by  the  rays  of  his  intellect  which  has  pointed  the  way  to  the 
new  summit  of  achievement. 

The  shoots  of  all  that  is  new,  progressive,  beautiful  and  exalted  in  our 
life  reach  out  to  Stalin  as  to  the  sun.  Stalin  inspires  our  people  and 
gives  them  wings.  Stalin's  words,  Stalin's  kindness  and  solicitude  are  a 
source  of  life-giving  strength  to  millions.'^ 

He  quotes  a  poem  written  by  Mikhail  Isakovsky  which  reads,  as 
translated: — 

He  has  brought  us  strength  and  glory 

And  youth  for  ages  to  come. 

The  flush  of  a  beautiful  dawning 

Across  our  heaven  is  flung. 

So  let  us  lift  up  our  voices 

To  him  who  is  most  beloved. 

A  song  to  the  sun  and  to  justice, 

A  song  that  to  Stalin  is  sung.^ 

Another  poem  reads: — 

O  Great  Stalin,  O  leader  of  the  peoples. 
Thou  who  broughtest  man  to  birth, 
Thou  who  purifiest  the  earth. 
Thou  who  makest  bloom  the  spring, 

>  Blanshard.  op.  cit.  p.  71. 
=  Ibid.  p.  73. 
^  Ibid.  p.  74. 


THE     THEOCRACY     OF     COMMUNISM  165 

Thou  who  makest  vibrate  the  musical  chords, 
Thou  splendor  of  my  spring,  O  Thou 
Sun  reflected  of  millions  of  hearts.^ 

After  reading  or  chanting  such  poems  as  these,  the  next  and  logical 
step  for  the  communist  was  to  make  pilgrimage  to  the  Kremlin  and  walk 
where  Stalin  has  trod.  'Let  us  fall  on  our  knees  and  kiss  those  holy 
footprints!'^ 

Hysteria  apart,  there  is  great  significance  in  the  themes  which 
underlie  these  outpourings.  The  important  words  are  Father,  Sun, 
Rays,  life-giving  strength,  spring;  these  and  the  various  references  to 
fertility.  When  words  like  these  are  used  we  are  fairly  back  in  the 
world  of  Pharaoh,  Osiris  and  the  Golden  Bough. 

The  implications  of  this  godhead  are  immediate.  A  certain  stability 
has  been  gained  but  the  actual  king-priest  is  crippled  and  mummified. 
He  cannot  take  any  active  part  in  war,  partly  because  the  people  will 
not  let  him  (see  page  36)  and  partly  because  he  dare  not  risk  the 
consequences.  What  if  a  reverse  follows  his  visit  to  the  scene  of 
operations?  What  if  he  is  made  to  look  like  an  amateur  beside  some 
general?  What  if  he  trips  over  some  wire  and  falls  into  a  shell-hole? 
No,  the  battlefield  is  ruled  out  for  the  Military  Genius  of  our  Time. 
So  long  as  he  stays  at  home,  defeats  can  be  blamed  on  the  generals  in 
the  field,  who  have  been  disobedient  or  (more  probably)  treacherous. 
But  most  other  activities  are  ruled  out  for  the  same  sort  of  reason.  He 
dare  not  mount  a  horse  in  case  he  should  fall  off.  He  dare  not  shoot 
in  case  he  should  miss.  He  dare  not  paint  a  picture  in  case  someone 
else's  should  seem  better.  He  dare  not  visit  another  country  in  case 
he  should  be  made  to  seem  less  important  than  its  ruler.  He  dare 
play  no  game  in  case  he  should  lose.  There  is  scarcely  anything  he  can 
do  except  work  behind  closed  doors,  preside  over  councils,  execute 
any  possible  rival,  appear  dramatically  on  infrequent  state  occasions, 
make  oracular  speeches  and  wait  for  the  embalming  and  the  glass 
case  which  is  the  final  fate  of  a  god.  In  a  Theocracy,  as  the  King 
becomes  mummified,  it  is  the  priests  who  tend  to  rule. 

It  would  be  possible  to  quote  from  a  thousand  books  in  praise  of 
Communism.  They  should  be  classified,  however,  as  theology  rather 
than  as  political  thought.  For  just  as  St.  Augustine's  theory  rests  on 
the  assumption  that  Jesus  is  the  Son  of  God,  from  which  all  else 
follows,  so  Marxist  theory  rests  on  the  assumption  that  Karl  Marx  is 
God,  Lenin  his  prophet  and  the  current  Ruler  his  infallible  inter- 
preter. Granted  these  axioms,  there  is  room  to  discuss  how  Lenin 
would  have  solved  a  particular  problem,  or  even  what  Marx  meant  in 
some  passage  more  than  usually  obscure.  But  discussion  on  these  lines 

1  Ibid.  p.  74. 
^  Ibid.  p.  75. 


166  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

is  uninteresting  to  those  who  deny  the  axioms  upon  which  all  else 
depends.  Those,  however,  to  whom  the  Marxist  axioms  are  least 
acceptable  must  consider  that  Communism,  as  a  religion,  has  at 
least  provided  an  answer  to  the  practical  problem  of  ruling  China. 
There  are  many,  no  doubt,  who  would  prefer  to  see  Russia  and 
China  ruled  on  very  different  lines.  These  should  recall  that  a  Russia 
ruled  in  western  democratic  fashion  would  not  be  Russia.  It  would 
fall  into  as  many  fragments  as  did  Europe  when  the  Roman  Empire 
collapsed.  Such  a  disintegration  would  be  a  relief  to  many  other 
peoples  but  we  cannot  expect  the  Russians  to  welcome  it.  They 
would  be  vulnerable  to  external  dangers  of  which  they  have  had 
considerable  experience. 

While  it  would  be  rash  to  assert  that  Russia,  within  its  present 
boundaries  and  with  its  present  peoples,  could  not  be  governed  except 
theocratically,  it  is  at  least  fair  to  say  that  no  previous  example  exists 
of  such  an  area  being  governed  in  any  other  way.  Nor  has  the  theo- 
cratic element  been  absent  from  governments  with  a  far  simpler 
problem  to  solve.  The  New  England  Puritans,  a  minority  of  'Saints' 
among  a  greater  number  of  'strangers',  had  all  the  deep  convictions, 
all  the  austerity,  all  the  devotion  and  all  the  intolerance  of  the  modern 
communist.  They  left  a  permanent  influence  on  America  and  even 
upon  people  to  whom  their  virtues  now  seem  least  attractive.  It  would 
surelybe  wrong  to  deny  that  there  is  anything  of  value  in  the  idea  of  a 
chosen  minority  undergoing  an  arduous  training,  assuming  special 
and  onerous  responsibilities,  foregoing  any  material  reward  and 
devoting  their  lives  to  a  chosen  faith.  Would  it  not  be  equally  wrong 
to  question  the  right  of  the  majority  to  accept  the  leadership  of  these 
few?  For  there  is  little  evidence  to  show  that  the  majority  in  Russia  is 
averse  to  being  led.  There  are  democrats  who  will  assert  the  infalli- 
bility of  the  people  but  only  so  long  as  it  is  democracy  that  the  people 
choose.  There  is  much  in  this  attitude  of  the  very  intolerance  which 
the  democrat  is  eager  to  condemn  in  others.  That  the  Russians  and 
Chinese  will  evolve  in  time  a  system  of  government  different  from  the 
type  they  now  regard  as  orthodox  is  tolerably  certain.  That  it  will 
resemble  that  of  Britain  or  the  United  States  is  most  improbable.  It 
would  be  odd  indeed  if  the  same  answer  were  to  prove  correct  for 
problems  in  their  nature  so  entirely  different. 


PART     III 

Democracy 


CHAPTER    XIII 

The  Origins  of  Democracy 


IN  commenting  upon  the  course  of  history,  St.  Augustine  is  shrewd 
enough  to  suggest  (as  did  Sallust  before  him)  that  the  Athenians 
exceeded  other  people  more  in  their  publicity  than  in  their  deeds. ^ 
Most  subsequent  scholars  have  been  more  credulous,  one  result  being 
a  surprisingly  widespread  belief  that  the  Athenians  were  the  inventors 
of  democracy.  That  they  were  nothing  of  the  kind  is  tolerably  clear. 
What  we  owe  to  the  Athenians  is  not  the  thing  itself  or  even  its  name 
but  the  earliest  detailed  account  of  how  a  democracy  came  into  being, 
flourished  and  collapsed.  Of  the  Indian  democracies,  which  were 
probably  older,  we  have  all  too  little  precise  information.  There  is, 
however,  a  sense  in  which  many  people  have  had  a  measure  of 
democracy  in  their  village  life.  Of  China  it  has  been  said: — 

The  family,  the  clan,  the  guild  and  the  unorganised  gentry  play  the 
leading  part  in  rural  and  urban  self-government;  but  .  .  .  there  is  an 
endless  variety  of  groups  and  associations  organised  on  a  free  and 
voluntary  basis  for  an  endless  variety  of  social  ends  and  purposes 
which  make  China  a  vast  self-governed  and  law-abiding  society, 
costing  practically  nothing  to  maintain.- 

There  was  likewise  a  great  measure  of  democratic  activity  in 
ancient  India,  considerable  powers  being  left  to  families,  clans, 
village  communities  and  guilds.  The  Russians  also  had  their  mir  or 
village  community,  their  artel  or  crat^t  guild;  the  former  being  an 
assembly  of  the  peasants,  the  latter  of  workers  in  the  towns.  The 
Anglo-Saxon  folk-moot  had  its  parallel  in  Vedic  India. ^  It  would  be 
difficult,  therefore,  to  decide  in  what  country  democracy  first 
appeared.  Nor  would  it  be  much  easier  to  find  the  oldest  republic. 
The  choice  would  lie  perhaps  between  various  states  of  northern 
India.  These  were  presumably  monarchies  at  an  earlier  period,  as 
some  were  to  remain,  but  some  were  republican  from  about  500  B.C. 
or  even  earlier.  One  people,  the  Lichchhavis,  with  their  capital  at 
Vaisali,  were  republicans  before  the  time  of  Cleisthenes  and  perhaps 

'  The  City  of  God.  John  Healey.  Trans.  Reprinted,  London,  1931.  Chap.  II.  Book 
XIV. 

^  Democracies  of  the  East.  R.  Mukerjee.  London,  1923. 

'  Indian  culture  through  the  ages.  S.  V.  Venkateswara.  London,  1932.  In  two  vols. 
Vol.  II.  Puh/lc  Life  and  Political  Institutions,  p.  24. 

168 


THE     ORIGINS     OF     DEMOCRACY  169 

even  earlier  than  Draco.'  They  were  ruled,  it  is  said,  by  an  assembly 
numbering  7,707.  These  enfranchised  citizens  may  have  been  only 
about  one  in  twenty  of  the  total  population  but  the  20,000  voters  of 
Athens  were  only  perhaps  one  in  eighteen.  The  honour  and  support 
which  the  Lichchhavis  gave  to  their  greatest  contemporary,  Gautama 
(or  the  Buddha),  contrasts  favourably,  one  might  add,  with  the  hem- 
lock which  the  Athenians  prescribed  for  Socrates.  And  if  the  Lichch- 
havis had  their  untouchables,  the  Athenians  had  their  slaves.  There 
were  other  republics  in  the  Punjab  and  the  Indus  valley,  especially 
between  500  B.C.  and  a.d.  400.  They  offered,  some  of  them,  a  stout 
resistance  to  Alexander's  army.  There  is  even  mention  of  three 
republics  forming  a  federation  in  the  vicinity  of  Delhi."  There  was 
nothing  comparable  to  this  in  southern  India,  it  appears,  but  there 
the  local  government  among  the  Tamils  was  more  highly  developed 
and  on  even  more  democratic  lines,  with  a  public  assembly  electing 
the  village  council. 

While  it  might  prove  impossible  to  decide  when  and  where  democ- 
racy first  appeared,  it  is  somewhat  easier  to  discover  how.  For  such 
facts  as  are  known  point  clearly  to  its  being  normally  a  development 
of  aristocracy.  We  learn,  for  example,  that  all  the  voters  of  Vaisali 
were  called  'Raja'  just  as  all  modern  British  taxpayers  are  addressed 
by  the  Board  of  Inland  Revenue  as  'Esquire'.  The  enfranchised 
Lichchhavis  recognised,  in  fact,  no  class  distinction  among  them- 
selves 'everyone  thinking  that  he  was  the  Raja'."'  it  was  that  same 
equality  and  voting  procedure  which  was  copied  by  the  Buddhist 
monasteries,  and  it  is  at  least  an  interesting  speculation  to  wonder 
whether  some  of  the  same  ideas  passed  via  western  monasticism  into 
modern  democratic  practice.  Whatever  the  truth  may  be  about  that, 
it  is  evidently  the  tendency  for  an  aristocracy  to  lose  its  powers  by 
diffusion  and  dilution.  The  process  is  essentially  biological,  closely 
resembling  the  earlier  process  by  which  monarchy  itself  declines,  if 
the  essence  of  aristocracy  is  noble  descent,  all  children  of  noble 
parentage  are  equally  what  the  Indians  would  call  Kshalriyas  or 
warriors.  They  must  become  more  numerous  in  each  generation.  Nor 
can  they  all  be  wealthy.  In  time,  moreover,  they  cannot  all  even  be 
soldiers.  The  Kshalriyas,  for  example,  of  the  Indian  republics  'fol- 
lowed trade  and  commerce'  as  well  as  arms.^  Once  this  stage  has  been 
reached,  democracy  is  in  sight.  This  process  is  termed  'timocracy' 
by  Plato. ^ 

The  process  of  diffusion,  as  noble  blood  becomes  more  common,  is 

'  Hindu  Civilization.  R.  K.  Mookerji.  Bombay  1950.  pp.  203-207. 

^  State  and  Government  in  Ancient  India.  A.  S.  Altekar.  Benares,  1949.  pp.  78-79. 

'  R.  K.  Mookerji.  op.  cit.  p.  205. 

"  Altekar.  op.  cit.  p.  75. 

'  Greek  Political  Theory.  Sir  Ernest  Barker.  4th  ed.  London,  1951.  pp.  251-2. 


170  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

matched  by  the  simultaneous  process  of  dilution;  a  process  which  the 
Indian  caste  system  was  carefully  designed  to  prevent.  In  lands  with 
a  less  rigid  system  of  class  distinction,  it  was  always  difficult,  in 
practice,  to  exclude  from  the  upper  class  a  growing  number  of  the 
skilled,  the  able  or  the  dangerous.  Knightly  rank  has  always  been  won 
on  the  battlefield  and  can  scarcely  be  denied  to  the  merchant  whose 
travels  may  bring  him  into  comparable  peril.  And  if  the  merchant 
wears  the  sword,  the  lawyer  sent  on  embassy  deserves  no  less.  But  no 
trader  or  professional  man  can  deny  a  measure  of  respect  to  his 
customers  or  clients.  He  who  sells  can  claim  no  superiority  over  those 
who  buy.  When  in  doubt,  he  will  prefer  to  call  the  stranger  'Sir'  or 
'Lord'.  That  his  customers  are  all  'ladies  and  gentlemen'  is  the  proof 
in  fact  of  his  success.  There  is  thus  a  tendency  in  most  languages  for 
the  word  'gentleman'  to  become  meaningless,  being  applied  eventually 
to  all  above  the  status  of  peasant,  or  to  all  perhaps  not  actually  slaves. 
The  assumption  of  'gentle'  rank  by  so  large  a  number  is  not  in- 
consistent with  the  claim  by  a  minority  to  a  still  higher  status.  But  the 
claim  becomes  difficult  to  sustain  as  against  others  whose  birth, 
education,  military  prowess  and  wealth  is  not  perceptibly  inferior. 
Such  a  claim,  if  persisted  in,  may  end  in  middle-class  revolt.  If,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  claim  is  tacitly  dropped,  a  democratic  equality  has 
been  practically  achieved.  Historically,  the  tendency  has  been  for  the 
privileged  class  to  split,  the  more  snobbish  provoking  by  their  conduct 
a  revolt  with  which  the  less  snobbish  are  openly  sympathetic  (not 
without  advantage  to  themselves).  The  French  Revolution  of  1789 
provides  us  with  a  classic  example  of  this  process.  Had  none  of  the 
aristocrats  believed  in  aristocracy  the  rising  would  never  have  begun. 
Had  they  all  believed  in  aristocracy,  it  might  have  been  easily  sup- 
pressed. As  it  was,  some  were  unpopular,  more  were  undecided  and 
a  few  were  openly  on  the  side  of  the  unprivileged.  The  same  situation 
existed  in  Britain  during  the  period  1900-1920.  The  aristocracy  was 
too  uncertain  of  itself  to  make  any  spectacular  stand  against  the 
quiet  revolution  which  was  taking  place.  Many  sought  to  escape  the 
unpopularity  which  a  few  had  earned.  There  emerged  the  Mirabeau 
type,  the  Etonian  socialist.  None  dared  uphold  the  principle  of 
aristocracy  as  such  save  in  the  most  evasive  term.  The  collapse  of 
aristocracy  was  further  hastened  by  two  other  factors  which  may  well 
have  been  important  at  similar  periods  of  transition  in  the  past.  One 
factor  was  the  failure  to  breed,  common  among  the  politically  un- 
certain. The  other  was  the  incidence  of  war  casualties,  falling  most 
heavily  upon  the  limited  class  from  which  future  leaders  might  other- 
wise have  been  drawn.  The  British  aristocracy  went  down  before  the 
revolution  of  1 9 1 4- 1 8,  victims  of  a  conflict  in  which  generals  lost  their 
reputation  while  subalterns  lost  their  lives.  The  survivors  of  a  war  in 


THE    ORIGINS    OF     DEMOCRACY  171 

which  the  dangers  had  been  experienced  by  all  alike  could  do  nothing 
but  talk  about  the  virtues  of  democracy.  Death  duties  finished  what 
machine  guns  had  begun. 

To  study  in  any  detail  the  process  by  which  aristocracy  turns  into 
democracy,  we  must  turn  first  to  Athens  and  Rome.  And  one  feature 
of  European  democracy,  as  seen  in  classical  times  and  as  contrasting 
with  the  democracies  of  the  East,  is  the  emergence  of  the  individual. 
The  Oriental  attitude  to  this  phenomenon  has  been  well  expressed 
by  Professor  Radhakamal  Mukerjee: — 

The  realisation  of  right  had  been  from  the  first  a  social  function;  but 
its  enforcement  was  incumbent  on  the  unit  groups  of  individuals 
(families,  clans,  tribes,  village  communities  or  guilds  bound  together 
by  friendship).  The  acquisition  by  the  State  of  supreme  and  unlimited 
power  and  jurisdiction  over  society  and  its  economic,  social  and  cul- 
tural interests  has  been  a  gradual  but  inevitable  development  in  the 
West;  and  this  apotheosis  of  the  State  has  given  a  wrong  trend  to 
civilisation.  In  China  and  India,  the  rules  of  conduct  evolved  by  the 
unit  groups  of  individuals  still  constitute  the  communal  code,  while 
the  rules  of  morality  form  a  second  code,  set  above  the  communal  law 
and  embodying  a  larger  aggregate  of  duties.  The  two  together  embrace 
the  whole  field  of  life;  and  much  that  falls  to  State  or  government  in 
the  West  to  further  public  welfare  by  means  of  the  creation  and 
administration  of  law  is  left  to  myriad  local  groups  and  assemblies  in 
the  communalistic  polity.  Unregulated  individualism  and  absolute 
State  authority  go  together.  .  .  .^ 

What  was  novel,  in  fact,  about  the  republic  of  Athens  was  not  its 
democracy  as  such  but  its  emphasis  on  the  individual  rather  than  on 
the  group.  Once  the  individual  citizen  becomes  the  imit,  divorced 
from  his  clan  or  trade  guild  or  village,  he  is  immeasurably  weakened 
in  his  relationship  with  the  State.  And  the  State  is  correspondingly 
strengthened  as  group  loyalties  disappear. 

Athens  was  ruled  at  first,  like  other  States,  by  a  god-descended 
king.  But  whereas  at  Rome  the  king  was  dethroned  by  an  aristocratic 
revolution,  at  Athens  the  monarchy  was  gradually  and  quietly  re- 
placed-. First  we  hear  of  the  king's  successor  being  chosen  from  among 
members  of  the  royal  family.  Next  we  hear  of  a  General  and  a  Judge 
(both  of  royal  blood)  appointed  to  assist  the  king.  Then  the  office  of 
judge  or  Archon  is  thrown  open  to  men  of  noble  family  (c.  725  B.C.), 
the  period  of  office  being  reduced  from  ten  years  to  one.  The  appear- 
ance of  the  Council  of  Nine,  and  the  Areopogus  or  Council  of  the 
'Eupatridae',  marks  the  aristocratic  control  which  existed  during  the 
later  days  of  the  monarchy.  By  683  B.C.  Athens  was  an  aristocratic 
republic. 

'  Democracies  of  the  East.  R.  Mukerjee.  London,  1923.  pp.  78-79. 

-  The  City-State  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans.  W.  Warde- Fowler.  Ed.  of  1931. 


172  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

Thus  the  constitutional  frame  in  which  the  city-state  was  built  was 
aristocracy.  With  settled  life  personal  leadership  had  given  place  to  the 
steady  influence  of  a  class.  Overseas  this  class  was  sometimes  the 
original  settlers  who  kept  political  power  in  their  own  hands.  In  Greece 
proper  long-established  wealth  or  pride  of  birth,  displayed  in  the  keep- 
ing of  horses  or  the  membership  of  aristocratic  clans,  had  shown  itself 
too  in  the  service  of  the  state.  As  the  king  had  dwindled,  so  the  old 
assembly  of  freemen  disappeared  or  counted  for  little.  The  state  was 
the  possession  of  those  who  had  the  freedom  to  serve  it.  .  .  .^ 

But  aristocracy  had  no  very  firm  basis  among  the  Greeks.  It  had  no 
strong  religious  sanction,  the  Greeks  not  being,  by  Eastern  standards, 
a  very  religious  people.  It  had  no  monopoly  of  learning,  for  the 
Greeks,  taking  their  civilisation  from  Asia  (and  being  the  first  Euro- 
pean people  to  experience  it),  had  adopted  the  simple  phonetic 
alphabet  of  the  Phoenicians.  It  had  no  monopoly  of  wealth,  for  the 
Greeks  were  seafarers  and  traders,  living  in  a  rather  poor  land.  It  had 
no  basis  in  luxury  for  the  Greek  tastes  were  simple;  nor  in  leisure,  for 
most  Greeks  seem  to  have  had  that.  It  had,  above  all,  no  basis  in 
horsemanship  for  horses,  though  used,  played  a  relatively  small  part 
in  Greek  life.  Greece  (apart  from  Thessaly)  had  neither  the  pasture 
on  which  horses  could  graze  nor  the  terrain  in  which  cavalry  could 
operate.  It  has  been  pointed  out,  moreover,  that  the  horses  which 
are  represented  in  the  Parthenon  frieze  are  little  larger  than  ponies. 
No  iron  shoes  were  used  before  the  second  century  B.C.  and  Greece 
is  a  stony  land.  Unshod,  without  saddle  or  stirrups,  the  horses  of  the 
breed  represented  in  these  carvings  could  have  been  of  no  use  in  the 
charge.-  Aristotle  himself  remarks  that  the  upper  class  in  Thessaly 
could  subdue  the  rabble.  That  this  was  untrue  in  Athens  is  one  reason 
why  the  aristocratic  phase  there  was  relatively  brief.  It  lasted,  in  fact, 
from  about  750  B.C.  until  about  600  B.C.  The  framework  of  democracy, 
created  by  Solon  (Archon  in  594  B.C.)  and  perfected  by  Cleisthenes 
(c.  525  B.C.),  lasted  until  about  338  B.C. 

The  essential  point  in  the  reforms  of  Solon  and  Cleisthenes  was  the 
abolition  of  the  clans.  Democracy  in  the  Greek  sense  was  incom- 
patible with  communal  organisation  or  with  the  continued  influence 
of  the  areopogus.^  The  constitution,  after  the  citizens  had  been  re- 
organised into  ten  new  'demes'  or  townships  of  non-tribal  character, 
can  be  regarded  as  a  bold  experiment  in  direct  and  representative 
democracy.  By  the  time  of  Pericles,  sovereignty  lay  in  the  Ecclesia, 
the  assembly  of  free  citizens  of  military  age,  numbering  perhaps 
20,000  in  theory,  paid  for  their  attendance,  and  meeting  at  least  forty 

'  The  Cambridge  Ancient  History.  Vol.  III.  p.  700.  (Chapter  XXVI,  Professor  F.  E. 
Adcock). 

-  The  Economics  of  Ancient  Greece.  H.  Michell.  Cambridge,  1940. 

'  Its  powers  were  mostly  abolished  in  462  b.c.  See  The  Greek  Citv  and  its  Institutions. 
G.  Glotz.  London,  1950.  p.  125. 


THE     ORIGINS     OF     DEMOCRACY  173 

times  a  year.^  Executive  power  was  delegated,  however,  to  the  Council 
of  Five  Hundred  elected  annually  by  the  Ecclesia,  meeting  every  five 
days  and  sitting  fifty  at  a  time.  This  Council  delegated  much  of  its 
power  in  turn  to  Committees.  These  Committees  dealt  with  Justice, 
War,  Finance,  Education,  Religion,  Dockyards  and  Accounts. 
Members  of  the  more  important  Committees  (War,  Finance  etc.) 
were  elected  from  the  Council  in  office.  Those  serving  on  the  less 
important  Committees  were  chosen  by  lot.  Total  committee  member- 
ship came  to  1,200-1,400  all  told,  so  that  everyone  would  have  his 
turn  in  office.  Courts  of  Law  were  equally  democratic  in  character, 
each  comprising  500  members  of  the  Ecclesia  sitting  as  a  kind  of  jury  .'- 

The  citizens  with  full  political  rights  thus  numbered  20,000  at 
most  out  of  a  total  population  of  over  320,000.  No  voting  rights  were 
accorded  to  women,  minors,'  aliens  or  slaves.  Nor  would  such  a 
system  have  been  even  possible  without  slavery,  to  provide  the 
citizens  with  leisure,  or  tribute  (drawn  from  the  subject  cities  of  the 
Athenian  League)  to  provide  the  voters  with  their  pay.  But  when  all 
these  limitations  have  been  conceded,  it  remains  true  that  it  was  as 
real  a  democracy  as  has  ever,  perhaps,  existed.  It  was  government  by 
the  many  and  involved  the  active  and  direct  participation  of  as  many 
people  as  was  practicable.  More  than  that,  the  defects  of  Athenian 
democracy  were  democratic  defects,  arising  not  from  the  restriction 
of  the  suffrage  but  from  its  breadth.  There  is  every  reason,  in  fact,  for 
concluding  that  a  wider  franchise  would  have  made  them  not  better 
but  worse. 

What  were  these  defects?  The  first  was  inherent  in  a  system  which 
gave  equal  political  rights  to  the  rich  and  the  poor.  It  is  true  that  the 
Athenian  'poor'  excluded  most  of  those  whom  we  should  describe  as 
the  working  class;  for  these  were  slaves.  But  there  were  citizens  quite 
poor  enough  to  envy  the  wealth  of  the  others.  Nor  did  their  com- 
parative poverty  make  them  less  politically  active  in  a  state  where 
political  service  was  paid.  Their  natural  instinct  was  to  tax  or  fine  the 
rich  out  of  existence.  The  reaction  of  the  more  prosperous  was  to 
form  societies  for  mutual  protection  and  political  reform.  These 
activities  were,  or  could  be  regarded  as  treasonable,  and  the  result 
was  a  series  of  prosecutions  of  the  wealthy  between  410  and  405  B.C. 
Those  not  actually  prosecuted  were  blackmailed  with  the  threat  of 
prosecution.  Many,  like  Euripides  and  Agathon,  ffed  to  Macedonia. 

'  Actual  attendance  was  very  much  less.  At  the  only  division  for  which  we  have 
exact  figures,  3,616  men  voted.  There  may  have  been  5,000-6,000  present  on  more 
important  occasions.  See  A.  Zimmern,  The  Greek  Commonwealth.  Oxford.  Ed.  of  1952. 
p.  169. 

^  See  Cambridge  Ancient  History.  Vol.  V,  p.  98  et  seq.  (Chap.  IV)  and  A.  Zimmern, 
op.  cit.  p.  175. 

'  Voters  had  to  be  over  20  years  of  age,  making  their  possible  number  about  20,000. 
But  by  the  end  of  the  Peloponnesian  War  it  was  practically  impossible  to  collect  even 
5,000.  See  Zimmern,  op.  cit.  p.  169. 


174  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

Alcibiades  fled  to  Thrace.  The  Athenian  Courts  of  Law  proved  an 
ideal  mechanism  for  pursuing  these  feuds  as  the  people  were  sitting 
in  judgment  on  what  might  be  their  own  cause;  the  confiscation  of 
property.  The  active  treason  of  the  wealthy  was  an  important  factor 
in  the  defeat  of  Athens  in  405  B.C. 

The  second  major  defect  lay  in  the  division  of  the  spoils.  Public 
funds  were  spent  in  the  payment  of  an  enormous  civil  service,  with 
large  numbers  of  people  thus  taken  from  productive  work.  The 
precise  statistics  here  are  in  dispute  and  it  is  a  question  whether  a 
half  or  merely  a  third  of  the  citizens  were  in  public  employment. 
There  seem,  at  any  rate,  to  have  been  20,000  so  employed  in  the  fifth 
century  B.C.  This  total  admittedly  included  6,000  soldiers  and  sailors; 
and  the  6,000  paid  jurors  might  of  course  be  regarded  as  old-age 
pensioners  or  unemployed.  Still,  with  all  allowances  made,  the  officials 
were  fairly  numerous.  They  included  some  2,850  policemen,  700 
home  civil  servants,  perhaps  300  in  the  colonial  service,^  500  members 
of  Council  and  over  3,000  subordinate  officials,  benefactors,  retired 
athletes  and  orphans.  There  are  many,  no  doubt,  who  would  regard 
full  employment,  in  this  sense,  as  a  merit  rather  than  a  defect.  It  was 
essentially  dependent,  however,  on  a  revenue  from  overseas  acquired 
by  anything  but  democratic  means.  This  revenue  apart,  it  was  simply 
a  living  on  capital,  a  fundamentally  unstable  process.  Public  servants 
could  not,  of  course,  be  dismissed  as  redundant,  they  and  their 
friends  being  voters. 

The  third  major  defect  lay  in  external  aff'airs.  Athens  could  not  have 
lasted  for  long  in  any  case  after  the  rise  of  Macedonia  but  it  remains 
roughly  true  to  say  that  the  Athenians  were  most  successful  between 
466  and  428  B.C.  when  ruled,  in  practice,  by  Pericles,  and  far  less 
successful  during  later  periods  of  more  typically  democratic  rule. 
Thucydides  is  emphatic  about  this: 

Pericles,  powerful  from  dignity  of  character  as  well  as  from  wisdom, 
and  conspicuously  above  the  least  tinge  of  corruption,  held  back  the 
people  with  a  free  hand,  and  was  their  real  leader  instead  of  being  led 
by  them.  For  not  being  a  seeker  of  power  from  unworthy  sources,  he 
did  not  speak  with  any  view  to  present  favour,  but  had  sufficient  sense 
of  dignity  to  contradict  them  on  occasion,  even  braving  their  dis- 
pleasure. .  .  .  But  those  who  succeeded  after  his  death,  being  more 
equal  one  with  another,  and  each  of  them  desiring  pre-eminence  over 
the  rest,  adopted  the  diff"erent  course  of  courting  the  favour  of  the 
people  and  sacrificing  to  that  object  even  important  state-interests." 

'  These  were  not  'career'  civil  servants  but  elected  amateur  officials,  serving  for  a 
limited  period  of  office.  The  number  given  does  not  include  the  slaves  in  public  owner- 
ship who  formed  the  more  permanent  element  in  the  establishment;  nor  the  Scythian 
archers  who  were  employed  to  keep  order. 

^  Thiicvclicks  II,  65  quoted  in  A  History  of  Greece  by  G.  Grote  in  ten  volumes. 
London,"  1888.  Vol.  V.  p.  95. 


THE     ORIGINS     OF     DEMOCRACY  175 

What  is  particularly  interesting  is  that  the  Athenian  failures  and 
mistakes  were  in  precisely  the  fields  of  activity  in  which  later  democ- 
racies have  also  tended  to  fail;  that  is  to  say,  in  colonial  policy, 
foreign  policy  and  war. 

There  is,  of  course,  a  basic  anomaly  in  a  democratic  state  having 
colonies  at  all.  The  Athenian  legend  had  been  built  up  round  the 
story  of  Greek  resistance  to  Persian  imperialism.  The  obvious  and 
expected  fate  of  the  Greek  cities  was  to  be  conquered  severally  by  the 
nearest  centralised  monarchy  of  any  size;  and  indeed  this  eventually 
happened.  During  their  period,  however,  of  independence,  the 
Athenians  based  their  reputation  upon  the  epic  stories  of  Marathon 
and  Salamis.  The  Athenian  Empire  began  as  an  alliance  of  free  cities 
against  the  threat  of  imperialism.  From  about  472  B.C.  its  character 
began  to  change  and  in  454  B.C.  the  treasury  of  the  federation  was 
removed  from  Delos  to  Athens.  Throughout  the  period,  in  fact,  of 
aristocratic  leadership  from  466  to  428  B.C.,  the  allied  cities  gradually 
became  colonial  territories;  subject  to  Athens,  their  champion  against 
Persia.  Under  aristocratic  rule,  the  Athenians  might  justify  their  own 
imperialism  or  at  least  find  excuses  for  it.  The  paternal  authority  they 
had  accepted  for  themselves  they  might  logically  recommend  to 
others.  But  when,  from  about  429  B.C.,  their  rule  became  more  purely 
democratic — a  rule  of  the  people,  for  the  people  and  by  the  people — 
no  possible  excuse  remained  for  denying  to  others  the  complete 
freedom  they  claimed  for  themselves.  Of  the  ethics  of  the  situation  the 
Athenians  were  fully  aware,  but  they  would  not  forego  the  advantages 
of  their  imperial  position.  More  than  that,  they  enforced  their  rule 
with  a  cynical  ferocity  which  should  always  be  remembered  in  dis- 
cussing the  merits  of  the  Athenian  experiment. 

Two  examples  of  Athenian  imperialism  are  particularly  worthy  of 
note,  both  dating  from  the  period  immediately  following  the  death  of 
Pericles.  It  was  in  428  e.c.  that  news  came  to  Athens  of  the  impending 
desertion  of  the  tributary  city  of  Mitylene — the  rulers  of  which  state 
desired  the  independence  which  they  in  turn  denied  to  Antissa, 
Eresus  and  Pyrrha.  The  Athenians  blockaded  and  besieged  Mitylene 
and  finally  brought  about  its  surrender.  There  followed  that  astonish- 
ing debate  in  which  Cleon,  the  leather-seller,  procured  a  popular 
decision  to  massacre  the  entire  Mytalenaean  population  of  military 
age.  Orders  were  sent  to  carry  out  this  decree  but  the  debate  was 
resumed  on  the  following  day.  Defending  the  decision  taken  against 
a  plea  for  mercy  put  forward  by  Diodotus,  Cleon  called  for  justice: 

.  .  .  warning  the  assembly  that  the  imperial  necessities  of  Athens 
essentially  required  the  constant  maintenance  of  a  sentiment  of  fear  in 
the  minds  of  unwilling  subjects,  and  that  they  must  prepare  to  see  their 
empire  pass  away  if  they  suflFered  themselves  to  be  guided  either  by 


176  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

compassion  for  those  who,  if  victors,  would  have  no  compassion  on 
them — or  by  unreasonable  moderation  towards  those  who  would 
neither  feel  nor  requite  it — or  by  the  mere  impression  of  seductive 
discourses.^ 

On  this  occasion  the  moderate  party  won,  another  ship  being  sent 
to  overtake  the  first,  bearing  a  cancellation  of  the  previous  decree. 
But  even  counsels  of  moderation  involved  killing  over  a  thousand 
prisoners  in  cold  blood — instead  of  the  six  thousand  as  at  first  decided 
upon.  The  cruelty  involved  is  less  striking,  perhaps,  than  the  argu- 
ment of  political  expediency  put  forward  to  justify  it. 

An  example  made  of  Mytilene,  the  Athenians  then  discovered, 
with  Cleon's  help,  that  they  could  themselves  avoid  war-taxes  simply 
by  doubling  the  amount  of  the  tribute  payable  under  treaty  by  the 
subject  cities.  This  increase  was  announced  in  425,  a  demand  being 
also  sent  to  the  neutral  island  of  Melos,  the  inhabitants  of  which  had 
never  entered  the  Athenian  Empire  at  all.  They  refused  to  pay  but  it 
was  not  until  416  B.C.  that  the  Athenians  had  the  forces  to  spare  with 
which  to  coerce  them.  In  that  year  an  expedition  was  sent,  bearing  a 
demand  for  the  arrears.  The  Athenian  envoys  are  said  by  Thucydides 
to  have  been  perfectly  candid  about  their  motives. 

We  shall  not  trouble  you  with  specious  pretences,  either  of  how  we 
have  a  right  to  our  Empire  because  we  overthrew  the  Persians,  or  are 
now  attacking  you  because  of  wrong  that  you  have  done  us.  You 
know  as  well  as  we  do  that  right,  as  the  world  goes,  is  only  in  question 
between  equals  in  power,  while  the  strong  do  what  they  can  and  the 
weak  suffer  what  they  must.- 

The  men  of  Melos  were  not  prepared  to  submit.  They  told  the 
Athenians  that  the  gods  would  favour  the  cause  of  the  just.  To  this 
the  men  of  Athens  replied  as  candidly  as  before: 

When  you  speak  of  the  favour  of  the  gods  we  may  as  fairly  hope  for 
that  as  you,  neither  our  pretensions  nor  our  conduct  being  in  any  way 
contrary  to  what  men  believe  of  the  gods,  or  practise  among  them- 
selves. Of  the  gods  we  believe,  and  of  men  we  know,  that  by  a  necessary 
law  of  their  nature  they  rule  wherever  they  can.  It  is  not  as  if  we  were 
the  first  to  make  this  law,  or  to  act  upon  it  when  made.  We  found  it  in 
the  world  before  us,  and  shall  leave  it  in  the  world  after  us;  all  we  do  is 
to  make  use  of  it,  knowing  that  you  and  everybody  else,  having  the 
same  power  as  we  have,  would  do  the  same  as  we  do.  Thus,  so  far  as 
the  gods  are  concerned,  we  have  no  fear  at  all.^ 

Melos  finally  surrendered  after  a  siege  lasting  some  months.  The 
Athenians  put  to  death  all  the  grown  men  and  sold  all  the  women 

'  Grote.  op.  cit.  pp.  169-172. 

-  The  Greek  Commonwealth.  A  Zimmern.  Oxford,  1952.  p.  441. 

^  Zimmern.  op.  cit.  pp.  442-443. 


THE    ORIGINS    OF     DEMOCRACY  177 

and  children  as  slaves.  Six  months  later  an  Athenian  fleet  and  army 
was  sent  to  conquer  Sicily  and  failed  disastrously.  By  412  B.C.  most 
of  the  Athenian  Empire  was  in  revolt. 

In  foreign  policy  the  Athenians  of  this  same  period  committed  at 
least  one  outstanding  crime  and  one  outstanding  blunder.  At  the 
time  of  the  battle  of  Marathon  the  state  of  Athens  had  had  as  its  sole 
ally  the  city  of  Plataea.  When  this  was  besieged  by  the  Peloponnesians, 
the  men  of  Plataea  sent  to  Athens  for  help.  Assistance  was  promised  in 
accordance  with  the  existing  and  old-standing  alliance  but  none  was 
sent.  Plataea  held  out  for  two  years  but  had  then  to  surrender. 
What  remained  of  the  garrison  amounted  to  225  men,  and  these 
were  all  put  to  death. ^  Plataea  was  only  thirty  miles  from  Athens 
and  could  have  been  relieved  without  much  difficulty.  But  there 
seemed  to  be  no  advantage  to  be  gained  by  doing  so.  And  the  forces 
which  might  have  saved  Plataea  in  427  b.c.  were  actually  deployed 
against  Mytilene.  Athenian  friendship  was  even  more  dangerous  than 
Athenian  hostility.  But  the  betrayal  of  Plataea  was  matched  in  folly, 
though  not  in  crime,  by  the  rejection  of  the  Spartan  offer  of  peace  in 
425  B.C.  It  was  made  at  a  moment  when  the  Athenians  were  in  a  strong 
position.  The  Spartan  envoys  were  allowed  to  address  the  Athenian 
Assembly  and  then  withdrew.  Persuaded  by  Cleon,  the  people 
decided  upon  impossibly  harsh  terms.  These  were  communicated  to 
the  envoys  publicly.  Nor  were  they  refused.  The  envoys  merely  asked 
to  discuss  the  terms  with  commissioners  appointed  to  negotiate. 
Cleon  then  said  that  this  proposal  proved  the  dishonesty  of  their 
intentions.  If  they  had  anything  to  say,  let  it  be  said  openly  before  the 
assembly.  This  was  agreed  with  acclamation. 

The  Lacedaemonians,  seeing  that  whatever  concessions  they  might 
be  prepared  to  make  in  their  humiliation  it  was  impossible  for  them  to 
speak  before  the  multitude  and  lose  credit  with  their  allies  for  a 
negotiation  in  which  they  might  after  all  miscarry,  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  that  the  Athenians  would  never  grant  what  they  asked  for  upon 
moderate  terms,  returned  home  from  Athens  with  their  mission  un- 
fulfilled.2 

It  should  suffice  to  say  that  the  Athenians  were  never  to  have  as 
favourable  an  opportunity  offered  them  again. 

Lastly,  there  is  the  failure  in  war.  Noteworthy  in  this  connection 
are  two  events  of  differing  importance  but  each  significant  in  its  own 
way.  The  first  was  the  attempt  to  surprise  Mitylene.  The  plan  was  to 
attack  the  city  at  the  time  of  a  religious  festival  during  which  the  entire 
population  would  have  gone  to  worship  at  the  temple  of  Apollo 
Maloeis,  leaving  their  walls  deserted.  But  this  plan  had  to  be  dis- 

'  Grote.  op.  cit.  pp.  179-184.  Vol.  V. 
^  Zimmern.  op.  cit.  pp.  438-439. 


178  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

cussed  in  the  public  assembly,  allowing  ample  time  for  information 
to  reach  the  Mitylenaeans,  who  promptly  cancelled  the  festival  and 
prepared  to  defend  themselves.  The  second  event  was  the  surprising 
result  of  the  debate  in  which,  following  the  dismissal  of  the  Spartan 
envoys,  the  politician  Cleon  urged  the  vigorous  prosecution  of  the 
war.  In  doing  so  he  said  or  implied  that  he  would  have  done  better 
than  the  generals  were  doing.  He  was  instantly  challenged  to  take  the 
command  himself.  While  his  political  opponents  joined  in  the  cry, 
expecting  a  failure  which  would  ruin  him,  his  friends  took  up  the 
challenge  on  his  behalf  and  urged  him  to  try  his  hand. 

Friends  as  well  as  enemies  thus  concurred  to  impose  upon  Cleon  a 
compulsion  not  to  be  eluded.  Of  all  the  parties  here  concerned,  those 
whose  conduct  is  the  most  unpardonably  disgraceful  are  Nicias  and 
his  oligarchal  supporters,  who  force  a  political  enemy  into  the  supreme 
command  against  his  own  strenuous  protest,  persuaded  that  he  will 
fail,  so  as  to  compromise  the  .lives  of  many  soldiers,  and  the  destinies 
of  the  state  on  an  important  emergency,  but  satisfying  themselves  with 
the  idea  that  they  shall  bring  him  to  disgrace  and  ruin.^ 

In  point  of  fact,  Cleon  won  and  returned  to  Athens  in  triumph.  It 
was  a  success  more  fatal,  however,  than  any  defeat  could  have  been, 
for  it  encouraged  him  to  assume  the  command  again  when  the 
situation  was  less  favourable  and  so  led  to  the  disaster  at  Amphipolis, 
largely  attributable  to  Cleon's  inexperience  and  panic. 

What  is  most  significant  about  this  affair  is  not  the  defeat  of  Athens 
but  the  extent  to  which  its  internal  politics  could  jeopardise  its 
security.  When  party  feeling  runs  so  high  that  a  commander  comes  to 
be  appointed  through  the  influence  of  those  who  hope  for  his  defeat, 
the  prospects  of  the  campaign  are  poor  indeed.  It  is  true  that  the 
decline  of  the  Athenian  Empire  was  due  to  many  factors  unconnected 
with  the  Athenian  form  of  government.  Neither  Lycurgus  nor 
Demetrius  of  Phalerum  could  have  restored  Athenian  hegemony  even 
had  they  tried.  But  the  fact  remains  that  the  Athenian  experiment 
revealed  where  democracy  is  likely  to  fail.  It  proved  that  the  voters  of 
an  imperialist  state  may  pay  little  heed  to  the  welfare  of  their  subject 
peoples.  It  tended  to  prove  that  the  voters  may  prove  unmindful  of 
any  obligations  or  aUiances  concluded  by  their  predecessors  but 
since  found  to  be  inconvenient.  It  also  seemed  to  suggest  that  the 
party  struggles  within  a  democratic  state  may  confuse  its  mihtary 
effort.  It  would  have  been  rash  to  conclude  then  as  it  would  be  to 
agree  now  that  every  democratic  state  is  bound  to  commit  exactly 
these  mistakes.  Still  less  should  we  forget  that  states  ruled  on  quite 
opposite  principles  have  come  to  grief  for  different  reasons — or  even 
for  the  same  reasons.  But  we  may  be  justified  in  thinking  that  these 

'  Grote.  op.  cit.  \o\.  V.  p.  256. 


THE     ORIGINS     OF     DEMOCRACY  179 

are  the  errors  to  which  a  democracy  is  most  exposed.  They  may  be 
avoided  perhaps  but  we  need  at  least  to  know  that  they  are  there. 

The  Athenian  experiment  in  democracy  is  the  more  worthy  of 
study  in  that  its  results  were  confirmed,  to  some  extent,  in  the 
histories  of  the  other  Greek  City  States;  cities  about  which  less  is 
known.  The  process  by  which  aristocracy  turns  into  democracy  was 
repeated  in  Corinth,  Thourioi,  Naxos  and  Cyrene.^  The  struggle,  the 
class  war,  between  the  more  and  the  less  prosperous  citizens  was  at 
least  a  common  feature  in  these  other  cities.  At  Miletus  in  630  B.C. 
there  were  two  parties,  called  respectively  'The  Wealthy'  and  'The 
Handworkers'."  At  Cyrene  five  hundred  of  the  wealthy  were  executed 
in  the  course  of  the  revolution  of  401  B.C.  Such  revolutions  were  fairly 
common,  although  by  no  means  invariable,  and  usually  (not  always) 
led  to  a  counter-revolution  at  some  later  date.  It  was  the  resulting 
variety  in  forms  of  rule  which  afforded  the  Greek  theorists  their 
opportunity  for  comparison — a  better  opportunity  perhaps  than  any 
thinker  has  had  since.  Nor  was  it  wasted.  The  scholars  of  the  Lyceum 
in  Athens  were  able  to  collect  and  compare  the  constitutions  of  a 
hundred  and  fifty-eight  cities.  They  had  seen  many  democracies  in 
their  rise,  their  fulfilment,  their  decay  and  their  collapse.  They  felt 
more  ready  to  generalise  than  do  modern  theorists  whose  experience 
is  so  much  less.  And  what  do  they  conclude? 

A  democracy  then,  as  I  imagine,  arises  when  the  poor,  prevailing 
over  the  rich,  kill  some  and  banish  others,  and  share  the  places  in  the 
republic  and  the  magistracies  equally  among  the  remainder.  .  .  .^ 

Plato  goes  on  to  describe  how  democracy  may  turn  into  anarchy, 
the  magistrates  losing  their  authority  over  the  people  and  the  elders 
losing  their  authority  over  the  young. 

Just  as  if  ...  a  father  should  accustom  himself  to  resemble  a  child 
and  to  be  afraid  of  his  sons,  and  the  son  .  .  .  neither  to  revere  nor  to 
stand  in  awe  of  his  parents,  that  so  indeed  he  may  be  free.  .  .  .  The 
teacher  in  such  a  city  fears  and  flatters  the  scholars  and  the  scholars 
despise  their  teachers.  .  .  .  And  in  general  the  youth  resemble  the  more 
advanced  in  years,  and  rival  it  with  them  both  in  words  and  deeds:  and 
the  old  men  sitting  down  with  the  young,  are  full  of  merriment  and 
pleasantry,  mimicking  the  youth,  that  they  may  not  appear  to  be 
morose  and  despotic. 

Plato  continues  from  there  to  show  how  employers  lose  control  of 
their  slaves  and  husbands  of  their  wives  until  finally  even  the 
domestic  animals  claim  their  independence. 

1  Greek  City-Stales.  Kathleen  Freeman.  London,  1950. 

'  K.  Freeman,  op.  cit.  p.  140. 

^  The  Republic  of  Plato.  Trans,  by  H.  Spans.  Everyman,  1927.  (Eighth  Book),  p.  270. 


180  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

.  .  .  For  readily  even  the  puppies,  according  to  the  proverb,  resemble 
their  mistresses;  and  the  horses  and  asses  are  accustomed  to  go  freely 
and  gracefully,  marching  up  against  any  one  they  meet  on  the  road 
unless  he  give  way.  .  .  .^ 

Aristotle  generalises  as  boldly  from  an  even  wider  experience. 

Liberty,  he  says,  is  the  first  principle  of  democracy.  'The  results  of 

liberty  are  that  the  numerical  majority  is  supreme,  and  that  each  man 

lives  as  he  likes. '^  Democracy,  he  realises,  will  lead  to  a  demand  that 

all  should  have  equal  possessions  as  well  as  equal  rights  (Book  II). 

For  the  real  difference  between  democracy  and  oligarchy  is  poverty 

and  wealth.  Wherever  men  rule  by  reason  of  their  wealth,  whether  they 

be  few  or  many,  that  is  an  oligarchy,  and  where  the  poor  rule,  that  is  a 

democracy.  .  .   ^ 

He  returns  to  the  theme  in  Book  VI : 

.  .  .  Every  citizen,  it  is  said,  must  have  equality,  and  therefore  in  a 
democracy  the  poor  have  more  power  than  the  rich,  because  there  are 
more  of  them,  and  the  will  of  the  majority  is  supreme.* 

What  the  will  of  the  majority  is  likely  to  be,  in  at  least  one  respect, 
Aristotle  very  well  knows:  \ 

.  .  .  Democrats  say  that  justice  is  that  to  which  the  majority  agree  ...  if 
justice  is  the  will  of  the  majority  .  .  .  they  will  unjustly  confiscate  the 
property  of  the  wealthy  minority.^ 

Some  would  deny  that  such  a  confiscation  is  unjust.  But  the  rights 
and  wrongs  are  not  to  our  present  purpose.  What  is  significant  is  that 
Aristotle,  having  carefully  collated  the  political  experience  of  a  wide 
variety  of  Greek  City  States,  is  able  to  assure  us  that  Athens  was  not 
exceptional.  Democracy  was  tried  repeatedly,  in  different  places  and 
for  differing  periods  of  time,  and  if  any  one  conclusion  can  be  reached 
from  a  study  of  the  results  it  is  that  democracy  will  lead,  sooner  or 
later,  to  socialism. 


■  Plato,  op.  cit.  p.  278. 

^  Aristotle's  Politics.  Trans,  by  Benjamin  Jowett.  Oxford,  1931.  Analysis,  p.  19. 

'  Aristotle,  op.  cit.  Book  III.  p.  116. 

^  Ibid.  p.  239. 

"Ibid.  p.  241. 


CHAPTER    XIV 

Democracy  at  Rome 


THE  democratic  phase  in  Roman  history  is  so  brief  that  a  cursory 
treatment  of  Roman  pohtical  institutions  is  apt  to  give  the 
impression  that  Rome  passed  directly  from  aristocracy  to  Dictator- 
ship and  Empire.  This  is  not  quite  true.  Rome  passed  through  the 
same  stages  as  Athens  had  done  but  with  a  different  emphasis  in  point 
of  time.  Rome  presented  a  far  bigger  problem  than  Athens  had  ever 
done;  bigger  in  area  and  in  population.  So  that  there  could  be  far  less 
pretence  of  collecting  a  representative  gathering  of  the  people.  Nor, 
had  this  been  done,  would  it  have  been  easy  for  any  one  speaker  to 
address  them.  Nevertheless,  the  Roman  constitution  was  basically 
that  of  a  Greek  city,  with  democratic  assemblies  playing  a  theo- 
retically important  part.  When  the  Roman  aristocracy  began  to  lose 
grip,  the  attempt  to  make  Rome  a  democracy  was  facilitated  by  the 
existence  of  institutions  and  laws  which  had  only  to  be  revived. 

The  aristocratic  governance  of  Rome  rested,  in  its  later  period, 
upon  the  concrete  success  of  the  second  Punic  War.  But  the  two 
parties,  the  exclusive  and  the  excluded,  were  in  existence  and  the 
prestige  of  the  former  tended  to  decline,  more  especially  during  the 
third  Macedonian  war.  It  could  be  argued  that  the  ruling  class  had 
been  corrupted  by  wealth. 

Opposed  to  the  rule  of  such  an  oligarchy  were  many  of  the  dispos- 
sessed, who  longed  for  economic  security;  many  of  the  plain  citizens, 
who  longed  for  an  efficient  and  civil  government;  the  more  ambitious 
members  of  the  rising  Equestrian  Order,  who  longed  for  political 
power;  and  such  aristocrats  as  had  fallen  on  evil  times,  or  were  for 
some  reason  or  other  at  variance  with  those  in  power,  and  longed  for 
dignitas. 

When  their  power  and  the  title  to  it  were  challenged,  the  ruling 
oligarchy,  perhaps  with  complacent  self-praise,  or  in  an  attempt  to  give 
their  social  and  political  supremacy  an  air  of  moral  superiority,  were 
pleased  to  consider  and  call  themselves  Optimates.  .  .  } 

Leader  of  the  Populares,  as  the  opposition  party  was  called,  was 
Tiberius  Gracchus,  Tribune  in  133  B.C.  He  tried  to  revive  the  practice 
of  bringing  legislation  before  the  popular  assembly  without  submit- 

'  Libertas  as  a  political  idea  at  Rome  during  the  late  Republic  and  early  Prinripate. 
Ch.  Wirszubski.  Cambridge,  1950.  p.  39. 

181 


182  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

ting  it  to  Senate.  He  succeeded  for  the  moment  by  rather  questionable 
means  but  was  killed  soon  afterwards  in  a  faction  fight.  The  demo- 
cratic party,  inactive  for  nine  years,  was  revived  by  Gaius  Gracchus, 
a  revolutionary  intent  on  avenging  his  brother's  death.  Securing 
election  as  Tribune  in  124  B.C.,  he  reUed  for  his  power  upon  the 
populace  of  Rome.  Perhaps  his  most  significant  piece  of  legislation 
was  the  Lex  Frumentaria  under  which  corn  was  bought  by  the  State 
and  sold  to  the  citizens  at  less  than  the  market  price. ^  This  first  law 
of  the  kind  fell  short  of  the  Athenian  direct  payment  to  voters  but  led 
to  further  and  similar  bids  for  popular  favour,  ending  in  the  logical 
outcome  of  58  B.C.  when  Clodius  made  the  distribution  entirely  free. 
Socialist  measures  of  this  kind  could  be  financed  only  from  two 
sources;  taxation  of  the  wealthy  or  taxation  of  the  Empire.  Gaius 
Gracchus  chose  the  latter  method.  His  brother  had  chosen  the  former, 
passing  (or  rather  reviving)  a  law  which  allowed  the  State  to  con- 
fiscate land  owned  by  individuals  in  excess  of  a  fixed  maximum  acre- 
age, and  redistribute  it  among  the  landless.  Land  had  been  in  fact 
confiscated,  at  a  low  compensation,  under  this  law.  Gaius  now 
altered  the  system  of  taxation  in  the  wealthiest  of  the  Roman  provinces, 
that  of  Asia.  Hitherto  the  provincials  had  paid  moderate  taxes, 
raising  them  themselves. 

This  system  was  now  abolished:  extensive  direct  and  indirect  taxes 
were  imposed,  and  the  usual  method  of  collecting  them  through  tax- 
farmers  was  adopted  as  in  Sicily  and  Sardinia  with  this  important 
distinction — instead  of  being  put  up  to  auction  in  the  provinces,  as  was 
done  in  these  two  cases,  so  that  the  contracts  were  often  undertaken 
by  provincial  companies,  it  was  enacted  that  the  taxes  of  the  whole 
province  should  be  leased  at  Rome,  so  that  the  provincials  themselves 
were  practically  excluded.  The  general  result  was  that  Asia  became  the 
scene  of  most  scandalous  extortion.  .  .  .  - 

The  democratic  movement  thus  included  some  of  the  main 
features  of  Athenian  democracy.  Nor  was  it  altogether  resisted  by 
the  aristocrats,  for  these  had  split,  in  normal  fashion,  the  Optimates 
being  opposed  when  most  reactionary  by  a  group  of  moderates — an 
aristocratic  party  which  centred  at  one  time  on  the  younger  Scipio. 
Weakened  by  disunity  among  themselves,  the  Senators  watched  the 
process  by  which  political  sovereignty  was  transferred  from  the 
Senate  to  the  Comitia.  Gracchus  had  managed  to  unite  against  the 
aristocracy  the  wealthier  citizens  of  other  than  noble  birth  and  the 
poor  citizens  now  living,  in  part,  at  the  public  expense.  While  this 
alliance  held,  the  democratic  group  could  continue  to  rule  Rome.  It 
became  the  object  of  the  Senatorial  party  to  split  the  coalition,  which 

'  The  Cambridge  Ancient  History.  Vol.  IX,  1932.  pp.  59,  165  and  524. 
-  A  Constitutional  and  Political  History  of  Rome  from  the  earliest  times  to  the  reign 
of  Domitian.  T.  M.  Taylor.  London,  1899.  p.  256. 


DEMOCRACY     AT     ROME  183 

Livius  Drusus  did  by  the  simple  means  of  outbidding  Gracchus  in 
generosity  at  the  Treasury's  expense.  Gracchus  failed  to  secure 
re-election  in  121  B.C.  and  was  killed  in  the  riots  which  were  now  a 
feature  of  these  political  contests.  For  a  time  there  was  an  uneasy 
balance  of  power,  accompanied  by  serious  military  disaster  in 
Numidia;  a  capitulation  due  at  least  in  part  to  the  absence  of  the 
Consul,  Spurius  Albinus,  in  Rome  at  the  time  of  the  elections. 
Shortly  afterwards  a  successful  general  of  the  Senatorial  party  was 
recalled  as  a  result  of  democratic  pressure.  Worse  was  to  follow  in 
105  B.C.  when  a  costly  defeat,  with  80,000  casualties,  was  attributed  to 
the  mutual  hostility  of  two  generals,  one  aristocratic  and  the  other 
not.  The  democratic  party  reached  its  peak  of  success  in  100  B.C. 
when  the  popular  leader  Saturninus  was  in  alliance  with  the  general, 
Marius.  It  must  then  have  seemed  inevitable  that  Rome  should 
become  and  for  long  remain  a  democracy. 

If  the  establishment  of  a  persistently  democratic  form  of  rule 
seemed  probable  then,  it  would  equally  seem  now,  in  retrospect,  that 
all  the  elements  needed  were  present.  The  Republican  aristocracy 
had  lost  all  special  claim  to  respect.  The  trade  expansion  which  had 
followed  the  Punic  Wars  and  the  revenues  since  drawn  from  Sicily, 
Spain,  Macedonia  and  Africa  had  opened  a  vast  field  for  political 
corruption.  What  had  been  an  aristocracy  had  become  an  oligarchy, 
with  direct  or  indirect  financial  interests  in  tax-farming,  banking  and 
contracting.  The  middle  class,  the  peasant  soldiers  of  an  earlier 
period,  had  mostly  vanished;  partly  as  a  result  of  war  casualties  and 
partly  through  the  ruin  of  soldiers  exiled  by  war  from  their  land.  The 
landless  citizens  who  flocked  into  Rome  formed  an  idle  and  demoral- 
ised urban  population  of  voters.  In  104  B.C.  the  Tribune  Philippus 
thus  declared  that  there  were  not  2,000  landowners  in  the  citizen 
body — which  then  numbered  394,000,  mostly  proletarians.  Mixed 
farming  had  declined,  land  being  devoted  more  to  olives,  vineyards 
and  garden-produce.  Food  was  mostly  imported  and  distributed  at 
below  cost  price.  The  populace  was  led  by  professional  politicians  of 
obscure  birth  and  the  oligarchs  had  been  compelled  to  retreat  from  one 
position  to  another  until  little  remained  of  their  prestige  and  less  of 
their  effective  power. 

Why  did  no  fairly  permanent  democracy  result?  The  main 
obstacle  to  the  establishment  of  a  democratic  form  of  government 
lay  in  the  mere  size  of  the  problem.  The  Athenians  were  relatively  few 
and  could  make  some  pretence  of  assembling  a  representative  body 
of  citizens  to  conduct  public  business  on  democratic  lines.  But  the 
practical  difficulty  (and  doubtful  wisdom)  of  assembling  the  citizens 
of  Rome  was  manifest.  The  eventual  result  could  only  be  chaos,  as 
the  more  responsible  citizens  could  see  for  themselves.  Even,  however, 


184  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

if  the  practical  problems  were  solved,  the  decisions  reached  would  not 
be  democratic  in  any  real  sense  of  the  word.  The  vote  did  not  extend 
to  the  rest  of  Italy,  still  less  to  the  Roman  Empire  as  a  whole.  Nor 
could  it  be  extended  more  widely  against  the  opposition  of  those 
already  voting.  The  decisions  made  would  nevertheless  affect  a  vast 
and  growing  territory — countries  which  the  Roman  voters  had  never 
seen  and  could  not,  perhaps,  have  even  found  on  the  map.  There 
was  far  less  moral  basis  for  a  democracy  in  Rome  than  there  had  been 
for  democracy  in  Athens.  In  the  most  careful  analysis,  it  did  not  even 
make  sense. 

The  only  possible  means  of  establishing  anything  like  a  real 
democracy  would  have  been  to  extend  citizenship  to  the  empire  and 
devise  some  means  of  representation  of  the  provincial  interests  at 
Rome.  As  a  result  of  the  revolt  called  'The  Social  War',  an  attempt 
was  in  fact  made  to  extend  the  franchise.  The  Lex  Julia  and  Lex 
Plantia  Papiria  (of  about  90  B.C.)  extended  the  franchise  widely  in 
Italy  but  there  was  little  danger  of  the  newly  enrolled  citizens  (who 
brought  the  total  to  910,000)  appearing  in  great  numbers  to  exercise 
their  rights.  Nor  does  it  seem  that  any  system  of  representation  was 
ever  seriously  discussed.  The  practical  difficulty  then  (as  now)  of 
reforming  an  electoral  system  is  that  those  actually  in  power  are 
usually  well  satisfied  with  the  process  which  brought  them  into  office. 
Those  in  opposition  are  more  disposed  to  be  critical  but  only  so  long 
as  they  are  powerless.  So  little  was  done  and  Rome  steadily  pro- 
gressed towards  anarchy,  an  interesting  feature  of  which  was  the 
debasement  of  the  currency  as  a  means  of  financing  the  continuance 
of  the  dole. 

From  about  99  B.C.  there  began  a  reaction  against  democracy, 
supported  clearly  by  a  body  of  moderate  opinion.  The  political 
struggle  fluctuated  but  the  Consul  Sulla  was  able,  with  the  use  of 
force,  to  restore  the  power  of  the  Senate.  In  doing  so,  he  had  some  of 
the  democratic  leaders  put  to  death.  He  then  strengthened  the  Senate 
by  the  addition  of  another  300  members  and  enacted  a  law  under 
which  no  measure  could  be  brought  before  the  Comitia  without  the 
Senate's  prior  consent.  The  democratic  experiment  was  almost  at  an 
end.  It  did  not  end  completely,  however,  until  82  B.C.  when  Sulla, 
returning  to  Rome  from  the  East,  defeated  the  democrats  at  the 
Colline  Gate — not,  however,  before  they  had  massacred  the  leaders 
of  the  Optimates.  Sulla,  who  was  extremely  able  but  not  personally 
ambitious,  set  about  the  task  of  restoring  the  republic.  He  was  ap- 
pointed Dictator  and  was  perhaps  the  first  to  hold  that  office  by  name 
in  its  modern  sense. 

The  first  chapter  of  Sulla's  rule  opened  with  the  most  awful  incident 
in  the  history  of  Rome.  In  virtue  of  his  unlimited  power  he  outlawed 


DEMOCRACY     AT    ROME  185 

all  who  had  fought  under  the  flag  of  the  Democratic  party,  except 
those  who  had  submitted  to  him  on  his  return;  their  lives  were  for- 
feited, their  property  confiscated  and  sold,  their  descendants  debarred 
from  all  political  preferment.  This  general  proclamation  was  soon 
replaced  by  a  formal  list  of  those  to  be  despatched;  it  contained 
4,700  names.  .  .  .^ 

The  democrats  thus  eliminated,  at  least  for  the  time  being,  Sulla 
restored  to  the  Senate  all  and  more  than  all  its  previous  powers. 

The  authority  and  power  of  the  Senate  were  increased  at  the  cost  of 
the  tribunes  and  the  popular  assembly.  All  the  rights  it  had  enjoyed 
before  the  legislation  of  the  Gracchi  were  now  restored  to  it.  To  Sulla 
it  was  obvious  that  the  Senate  could,  and  the  rabble  of  Rome  could  not, 
govern  a  world-wide  state.  .  .  .- 

What  may  have  been  obvious  then  is  less  obvious  to  us  now.  For  a 
Senate  in  which  all  leaders,  on  either  side,  had  been  killed,  and  in 
which  all  that  remained  were  in  fear  of  the  same  fate  was  not,  in 
practice,  a  very  effective  body  of  men.  Sulla  nevertheless  relinquished 
his  dictatorship  in  79  B.C.,  apparently  expecting  the  Republic  to  take 
on  a  new  lease  of  life.  It  did  not  do  that  and  indeed  it  barely  survived 
Sulla's  death  in  the  following  year. 

Whatever  Sulla's  precept  may  have  been,  his  example  had  mainly 
served  to  demonstrate  with  what  ease  a  successful  general  might 
become  dictator.  Nor  did  Senate  prove  able  to  cope  even  with  a 
revival  of  the  democrats.  As  Heitland  says: 

The  death  of  Sulla  ushers  in  the  final  period  of  revolution,  the  period 
in  which  the  Roman  Republic,  deprived  of  its  master,  proved  that  it 
could  not  do  without  one.^ 

The  period  from  78  to  59  B.C.  saw  the  rise  of  new  generals  under  the 
uncertain  rule  of  the  restored  oligarchy.  Two  events  of  the  greatest 
political  significance  were  the  Catilinian  conspiracy  and  the  election 
of  Julius  Caesar  as  Pontifex  Maximus.  The  conspiracy  of  Catiline, 
had  it  succeeded,  would  have  led  to  a  general  and  virtually  anarchist 
attack  on  property,  accompanied  by  a  massacre  of  the  wealthy.  It 
was  foiled  but  in  such  a  way  as  to  reveal  the  government's  essential 
weakness.  The  attempt  to  rule  an  Empire  through  the  political  mach- 
inery of  a  Greek  City  State  was  coming  to  an  end.^  And  the  election 
of  Julius  Caesar  as  Pontiff  or  Chief  Priest  was  a  hint  of  the  sort  of 
rule  which  was  destined  to  take  its  place.  Only  a  divine  ruler  could 

'  T.  M.  Taylor,  op.  cit.  p.  295. 

^  A  History  of  the  Ancient  World.  M.  Rostovtzeff.  Vol.  II.  Trans,  by  J.  D.  Duff. 
Oxford,  1928.  p.  125. 

'  The  Roman  Republic.  W.  E.  Heitland.  Cambridge,  1923.  Vol.  III.  p.  1. 

*  See  The  Roman  Revolution.  R.  Syme.  Oxford,  1939.  See  also  The  Roman  Middle 
Class  in  the  Republican  Period.  H.  Hill.  Oxford,  1952. 


186  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

effectively  control  the  territories  wiiich  the  Republic  had  conquered. 
The  Republic,  if  weakened  by  its  occasional  military  failures,  was 
essentially  killed  by  its  own  military  success. 

That  a  successful  general  should  make  himself  ruler,  to  the  intense 
relief  of  all  but  the  fanatics,  was  inevitable.  The  Roman  constitution 
provided  no  executive  body  and  no  permanent  officials.  It  provided 
no  administration  comparable  with  that  of  Egypt,  Persia  or  China. 
It  lacked,  above  all,  the  focus  which  could  be  given  only  by  a  deified 
head.  And  what  is  particularly  interesting  is  the  early  date  by  which 
this  last  need  was  perceived  by  one  who  was  in  a  posititon  to  supply 
it. 

Julius  Caesar  belonged  to  a  family,  to  begin  with,  of  divine  descent. 
He  could  and  did  claim  Aeneas  of  Troy  as  his  ancestor,  and  Aeneas 
was  the  son  of  Venus.  He  also  claimed  a  descent  from  the  Alban 
kings,  and  they  in  turn  were  descendants  of  Mars.  'The  connection 
with  Venus  was  always  emphasized  more  than  the  less  well  authen- 
ticated descent  from  Mars\^  Public  mention  was  made  of  this  claim 
as  early  as  68  B.C.  Then  came  his  election  as  Pontiff,  as  heir  therefore 
to  nearly  all  the  religious  functions  of  the  old  Roman  kings.  Familiar 
as  he  was  through  his  military  life  with  Asia,  Cilicia  and  Bithynia,  he 
knew  all  about  the  oriental  conception  of  monarchy.  Anything  he 
did  not  know  about  its  practical  application  he  learnt  later  on  in 
Egypt.  Caesar's  first  Consulship  began  in  59  B.C.  By  44  B.C.  he  had 
been  elected  Dictator  for  life.  What  his  political  programme  would 
have  been  had  he  lived  long  enough  to  fulfil  it,  we  are  not  to  know. 
What  we  do  know  is  the  fact  of  his  virtual  deification.  It  centred, 
first  of  all,  on  the  temple  of  Venus  Genetrix — on  Venus  considered  as 
mother  of  the  Julian  house.  This  was  built  in  the  Forum  and  Caesar's 
statue  was  erected  in  front  of  it.  Nor  was  this  all.  A  further  statue  of 
him  in  the  temple  of  Quirinus  was  set  up  in  45  B.C.  with  the  inscrip- 
tion 'To  the  unconquered  god'.  In  the  following  year  he  was  given  the 
title  of  'parens  patriae'. 

In  the  other  honors  we  find  Caesar  not  so  much  of  the  father  of  the 
Roman  state  as  the  heir  of  the  Hellenistic  kings.  His  birthday  was  made 
a  festival  on  which  public  sacrifices  should  be  made;  it  was  provided 
that  annual  sacrifices  for  his  safety  should  be  undertaken  and  that  each 
year  the  magistrates  should  swear  to  uphold  his  acts.  Games  to  be 
celebrated  in  his  honor  every  four  years  were  decreed  and  a  day  in  his 
name  was  added  to  each  of  the  great  festivals  of  Rome.  ...  It  was 
voted  to  build  a  temple  to  Concordia  Nova  because  it  was  through  him 
that  men  enjoyed  peace  and  concord.  The  name  of  the  month  Quinc- 
tilis  was  changed  to  Julius.  .  .  .  But  the  final  step  came  when  the  senate 
decreed  him  to  be  a  god  and  commanded  the  erection  of  a  temple  to 

'  The  Divinily  of  the  Roman  Emperor.  L.  R.  Taylor.  Connecticut  .1931.  p.  59. 


DEMOCRACYATROME  187 

him  and  his  Cleiiieiitia,  thus  formally  providing  for  his  enshrinement 
in  state  cult.  .  .  .^ 

Caesar's  death  at  the  hands  of  enraged  republicans  led  only  to  the 
eventual  installation  of  his  nephew  in  the  place  that  he  had  come  to 
occupy.  What  is  more  significant,  perhaps,  about  this  succession  was 
that  Augustus,  relinquishing  all  claim  to  be  Dictator  and  preferring 
to  be  called  Princeps  or  First  Citizen,  was  careful  to  uphold  his 
uncle's  divinity  and  later,  in  due  course,  to  assert  his  own.  It  was  the 
religious  aspect  of  Julius  Caesar's  position  that  he  chose  to  inherit. 

It  was  a  mere  ninety  years  from  the  first  assertion  of  democracy  in 
Rome  to  the  time  when  Julius  Caesar  was  installed  not  merely  as 
dictator  but  as  god.  Within  that  short  space  occurred  all  the  demo- 
cratic movements  from  that  led  by  Tiberius  Gracchus  to  that  led  by 
Catiline.  In  the  process  we  can  trace  how  oligarchy  at  Rome  turned 
into  democracy,  how  democracy  involved  class-war  and  socialist 
revolution,  how  class-war  led  to  chaos  and  how  dictatorship  resulted 
in  turn  from  that.  The  process  at  Rome  was  unusually  rapid.  Most 
rapid  of  all,  however,  was  the  process  by  which  thedictator  was  made 
a  deified  king.  The  change  from  a  republican  austerity  to  a  deified 
kingship  was  well  within  the  space  of  fifteen  years.  Nor  was  it  the 
corruption  of  an  institution  that  had  been  good  in  itself.  It  was, 
rather,  the  only  way  out  of  a  situation  that  had  become  intolerable. 


'  L.  R.  Taylor,  op.  cit.  p.  67. 


CHAPTER    XV 

Democracy  justified  by  Religion 


THE  rule  of  the  many  means  in  theory  that  the  more  important 
issues  should  be  decided  by  a  majority  vote  of  those  to  whom 
the  franchise  is  extended.  This  theory  implies  a  political  equality  be- 
tween those  voting,  one  vote  being  as  good  as  another.  We  know  of 
devices  that  have  been  used  to  give  an  unequal  value  to  the  votes  cast 
but  these  we  associate  with  states  tending,  like  Rome,  towards  the 
rule  of  the  few.  Democratic  theory  rests  on  the  assumption  that  the 
voters  are,  at  least  for  political  purposes,  equal.  The  democrat,  when 
faced  with  the  fact  that  those  who  are  politically  equal  are  economi- 
cally divided  into  classes  which  are  unequal  in  every  other  way,  has  a 
choice  between  two  lines  of  policy.  He  can  either  assert  that  it  is  only 
political  equality  that  matters  and  that  other  distinctions,  while 
present,  are  trivial.  Or  else  he  can  demand  the  abolition  of  all 
economic  inequalities  so  that  citizens  declared  to  be  politically  equal 
are  then  made  as  equal  as  possible  in  all  other  respects.  In  practice,  the 
first  argument  is  difficult  to  sustain.  The  tramp  selling  matches  on  the 
curb  may  be  the  political  equal  of  the  millionaire  who  sweeps  past  him 
in  a  high-powered  car.  Each  has  but  one  vote  and  both  are  subject  to 
the  same  laws.  To  most  people,  however,  (and  especially  to  the  tramp) 
the  inequality  of  their  circumstances  would  seem  to  be  more  striking 
than  the  special  sense  in  which  their  privileges  are  the  same.  The 
democrat  tends  therefore  to  adopt  the  other  line  of  argument.  Citizens 
equal  in  one  respect  should  be  made  equal  in  all.  The  experience  at 
least  of  Greece  and  Rome,  in  so  far  as  it  is  recorded,  suggests  that 
democracy  leads  directly  to  socialism — the  equalising  of  all  incomes 
with  the  possible  exception  of  those  enjoyed  by  the  socialist  thinkers 
themselves.  Nor  is  it  easy  to  see  how  it  could  possibly  be  otherwise. 
The  same  experience  would  suggest  that  socialism  will  tend  to  lead 
in  turn  to  anarchy,  bloodshed  and  dictatorship. 

An  exception,  however,  to  this  probable  sequence  is  offered  by 
communities  in  which  a  practical  equality  has  existed  from  the  first. 
These  are  the  monasteries  founded  by  the  stricter  adherents  of  a 
revealed  religion.  It  is  manifest  that  a  monastery  offers  the  perfect 
setting  for  democratic  experiment.  The  inmates  will  readily  concede 
their  equality  in  the  sight  of  God,  to  whose  service  they  are  all  equally 

188 


DEMOCRACY    JUSTIFIED     BY     RELIGION  189 

dedicated.  They  have  no  possessions.  Their  education  will  have  been 
virtually  the  same.  They  are  ceHbate,  childless  and  abstemious.  No 
one  can  be  superior  to  another  in  wealth,  marriage  or  posterity,  and 
any  differences  which  may  result  from  birth  or  upbringing  will  tend 
to  disappear.  It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  to  find  that  later  demo- 
cratic theory  is  rooted  in  revealed  religion  and  that  democratic 
practice  derives,  in  part,  from  monastic  rule. 

Buddhism  originates,  as  we  have  seen,  in  a  part  of  India  where  a 
type  of  democracy  was  known.  Whether  from  that  origin  or  from  the 
nature  of  monasticism  itself,  Buddhist  monks  evolved  a  democratic 
organisation  within  what  was  necessarily  a  theocratic  framework. 
Rule  of  a  Buddhist  monastery  was  vested  in  a  full  meeting  of  its 
members.  Unanimity  was  desired  but,  when  this  was  unobtainable,  a 
majority  vote  would  suffice.  The  rules  of  procedure,  however,  were 
strict.  There  had  to  be  a  quorum,  a  minimum  number  present.  Every 
motion  had  to  pass  two  or  four  readings,  the  first  being  formal.  Any 
motion  might  be  referred  to  a  committee,  either  as  a  form  of  closure 
or  because  irrelevant  and  pointless  speeches  were  being  made.  And 
the  vote  could  be  taken  in  three  ways;  the  open  vote  (by  a  show  of 
hands  or  some  similar  means),  the  whispering  vote  (in  which  the  teller 
was  told  in  a  whisper  by  each  monk  in  turn)  and  the  secret  vote.  This 
last  method  was  the  most  scientific.  Coloured  wooden  pins  or  tickets 
were  distributed,  each  monk  taking  one  secretly  and  showing  it  to 
no  one  else.  When  the  count  had  been  made,  the  result  had  to  be 
accepted.  But  to  this  rule  there  were  two  exceptions.  The  proceedings 
were  void  if  there  had  been  an  irregularity  of  procedure.  They  were 
void  also  if  they  could  be  shown  to  be  unconstitutional — contrary, 
that  is  to  say,  to  Buddhist  scripture.  If  valid  in  every  way,  the  decision 
taken  was  referred  to  as  an  Act. 

It  is  of  special  interest  to  note  that  Buddhist  procedure  was  far  in 
advance  of  anything  evolved  in  Athens  or  Rome.  It  was  far  in  ad- 
vance, for  that  matter,  of  British  practice  now.  It  spread  to  China  and 
Japan  and  remains  as  the  sovereign  power  in  Tibet.  What  is  difficult, 
however,  is  to  establish  a  definite  connection  between  the  monastic 
democracies  of  Buddhism  and  Christianity.  For  the  present  it  may 
suffice  to  point  out  that  the  same  features  appear  in  each.  The  monas- 
teries of  Christendom  held  regular  'Chapter'  meetings  at  which 
members  voted  on  matters  of  common  business.  They  also  held 
conferences  of  each  'Order',  attended  by  representatives  of  the 
different  monasteries,  and  it  was  perhaps  at  these  that  the  idea  of 
elected  representation  was  first  evolved.  Wherever  founded  and  in 
whatever  faith,  the  monasteries  provided  a  useful  background  for 

•  See  Theory  of  Government  in  Ancient  India.  Beni  Prasad.  Allahabad,  1927  pp. 
321-330. 


190  THE     EVOLUTION     OE     POLITICAL     IHOUGHT 

democratic  experiment.  For  the  equality  which  in  the  world  at  large 
is  a  theory  becomes,  in  a  monastery,  more  nearly  a  fact. 

But  monastic  equality  is  only  one  contribution  made  by  the  re- 
vealed religions  to  democratic  theory.  Buddhism,  Christianity  and 
Islam  are  at  one  in  stressing  the  concept  of  human  equality  before 
God.  The  idea  in  its  simplest  form  is  merely  that  differences  in 
strength,  size  and  intelligence  as  between  one  human  being  and 
another  can  be  scarcely  perceptible  from  heaven.  There  is  furthermore 
a  basic  equality  in  the  facts  of  birth,  childhood,  mating,  sickness, 
senility  and  death.  Buddhist  equality  is  on  a  long-term  basis  but  runs 
counter  nevertheless  to  the  Hindu  institution  of  Caste.  Christian 
equality  is  based  on  the  doctrine  of  the  fatherhood  of  God,  in  the 
light  of  which  the  believers  are  equal  as  brethren.  Muslim  equality 
runs  counter  to  Arab  tribal  differences,  instituting  a  fictitious  kinship 
in  the  faith  which  extends  a  religious  equality  to  all  followers  of 
Islam.  It  cannot  be  said,  however,  that  these  religious  concepts  had 
initially  much  political  effect.  Buddhism  has  normally  existed  along- 
side ordinary  types  of  government.  Christianity  in  its  Catholic  form 
has  always  allowed  of  a  certain  inequality  as  between  priest  and  lay- 
man. Nor  has  it  proved  incompatible  with  a  variety  of  political  insti- 
tutions. As  for  Islam,  its  democratic  theory  has  rarely  tended  towards 
democratic  practice.  It  is  important  to  remember,  in  this  connection, 
that  a  strong  belief  in  the  after-life  provides  a  poor  motive  for  seeking 
equality  in  this. 

A  theoretical  religious  equality  had  little  practical  application  in 
Europe  until  the  period  of  the  Reformation.  It  remained  important, 
nevertheless,  in  restraining  the  lengths  to  which  inequality  might 
otherwise  have  gone.  The  Christian  ruler  might  claim  divine  right  but 
he  could  not  claim  divine  descent,  Christ  having  been  childless.  There 
were  priests  at  hand  to  remind  him  that  he  was  only  human  and 
mortal.  He  ran  little  risk  of  being  deified.  And  the  idea  of  human 
equality,  based  on  religious  doctrine,  was  at  least  latent  among  the 
peasantry.  It  found  expression  in  occasional  peasant  revolts.  During 
one  of  these,  in  England,  the  rebels  chanted  'When  Adam  delved  and 
Eve  span,  who  was  then  the  gentleman?'  What  is  most  significant 
about  this  slogan  is  not  the  political  sentiment  so  much  as  the 
biblical  context.  Although  subject  to  feudal  rule,  the  catholic  peasants 
attended  church  and  were  taught  a  faith  which  implied  (while  not 
stressing)  a  basic  equality  in  baptism,  communion  and  burial.  In  the 
sixteenth  century  this  aspect  of  Christianity  received  more  publicity, 
partly  through  the  laity's  access  to  holy  writ  and  partly  because  the 
devout  sometimes  found  themselves  subject  to  rulers  who  were  not  of 
the  same  sect.  If  oppressed  by  a  heretic,  the  people  surely  had  the  right 
— in  fact,  the  duty — to  rebel.  But  such  a  right  would  seem  to  suggest 


DEMOCRACY     JUSTIFIED     BY     RELIGION  191 

that  sovereignty  lay,  and  had  always  lain,  in  the  people  themselves. 
An  acquaintance  with  classical  literature,  by  then  becoming  less 
exceptional  among  laymen,  also  led  to  talk  about  the  democracies  of 
ancient  Greece.  Reluctant  theologians  were  driven  to  defending  the 
idea  of  equality,  if  only  among  their  co-religionists. 

So  the  first  practical  support  for  democracy  in  modern  Europe 
came  from  religious  minorities  intent  on  justifying  their  resistance  to 
persecution.  These  minorities,  were  Catholic  or  Protestant,  were  often 
composed  of  quite  humble  people.  Having  lost  their  natural  leaders, 
whom  they  had  to  regard  as  heretical,  they  vested  authority  in  them- 
selves. Lainey,  second  General  of  the  Society  of  Jesus,  said  something 
about  the  sovereignty  of  the  people  in  1562,  at  the  Council  of  Trent. 
The  idea  was  put  forward  by  Mariana  in  1598  and  again  in  1599  in  a 
work  dedicated  to  Philip  III.  Another  writer,  Rossaeus,  explained 
'that  the  people  can  extend,  restrain,  change,  and,  if  circumstances 
demand  it,  completely  suppress  their  government  and  institute  an- 
other, under  another  form'.  The  Jesuit  Suarez  defended  the  people 
against  their  ruler,  the  poor  against  the  rich.  He  was  upholding  the 
doctrine  intended,  however,  for  Catholic  subjects  under  Protestant 
rulers.  Less  was  heard  of  it  in  the  France  of  Louis  XIV,  where  demo- 
cratic ideas  were  mostly  confined  to  protestants,  and  protestants 
mostly  confined  to  jail.  In  England,  similarly,  democratic  theory  first 
became  coherent  among  extreme  protestants  who  found  Queen 
Elizabeth's  Church  of  England  not  protestant  enough.  They  could  not 
admit  the  rightful  power  of  King,  Parliament,  Bishops  or  Gentry  and 
were  driven  therefore  to  conclude  that  political  power  should  be 
vested  in  themselves,  a  minority  of  people  really  in  touch  with  God. 
As  Hobbes  remarked, 

For  after  the  Bible  was  translated  into  English  every  man,  nay  every 
boy  and  every  wench  that  could  read  English,  thought  they  spoke  with 
God  Almighty  and  understood  what  he  said.^ 

The  fact  that  the  idea  of  human  equality  should  spring  up  among 
persecuted  Huguenots  in  France  and  dour  Calvinists  in  Scotland  may 
serve  at  least  to  remind  us  that  the  idea  is  religious.  It  came  to  the 
fore  among  the  seventeenth  century  Puritans  and  went  with  them  to 
America.  It  reached  America  separately  from  Holland  and  Switzer- 
land. 'Let  not  Geneva  be  forgotten  or  despised'  wrote  John  Adams, 
second  President  of  the  United  States.  It  is  true  that  Puritan  equality 
did  not  extend  to  catholics  or  negroes.  It  did  not  even  extend  to 
Puritans  of  a  different  sect.  We  read  of  Fifth  Monarchy  Men, 
Baptists  and  Levellers,  as  also  of  Quakers,  whose  'counterfeited 

'  Hobhes.  G.  P.  Gooch.  London,  1939. 


192  THE     EVOLUTION     OE     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

simplicity  renders  them  the  more  dangerous'.^  These  and  the  avowed 
communists  or  Diggers,  the  extreme  party  led  by  Winstanley,  were 
never  conspicuous  for  their  tolerance  of  each  other.  They  were 
agreed,  however,  in  opposing  any  idea  of  inequality  based  on  an- 
cestry. To  the  inequalities  of  wealth  they  opposed  a  far  less  united 
front.  They  achieved,  nevertheless,  and  transmitted  to  later  British 
nonconformists  a  vague  idea  that  men  are  equal,  in  some  sense,  at 
birth.  They  would  not  accept  any  claim  to  superiority  based  on 
descent,  courage,  manners,  speech  or  dress.  Some  would  even  reject 
a  claim  to  superiority  based  upon  worldly  success.  All,  however, 
would  assert  their  own  claim  to  an  intimate  footing  with  God. 
When  democratic  ideas  of  quite  different  origin  reached  England  in 
the  late  eighteenth  century,  they  were  welcome,  up  to  a  point,  among 
people  already  steeped  in  nonconformity.  And,  later,  it  was  upon  a 
foundation  of  nonconformity  that  the  British  Eabour  Party  was 
built. 

Puritanism  found  another  home,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the  American 
colonies.  The  godly  colonists  of  New  England  received  great  en- 
couragement when  the  Roundheads  triumphed  in  the  Civil  War  and 
were  correspondingly  estranged  from  England  when  the  monarchy 
was  restored.  They  were  still  more  estranged  when  the  English 
monarchy  showed  signs  of  life  in  the  person  of  George  ill.  People  of 
republican  views  formed  the  hard  core  of  the  American  resistance  to 
England.  Their  success  in  the  War  of  Independence  (with  French 
help)  caused  in  Europe  a  wave  of  republican  and  egalitarian  senti- 
ment, derived  indirectly  from  Republican  Holland  and  Roundhead 
England.  Instead  of  looking,  as  some  had  done,  to  the  success  of  the 
aristocratic  government  of  England,  thinkers  began  to  take  their 
inspiration  from  the  United  States;  as  many  of  them  still  do. 

Of  the  revealed  religions  Christianity  is  almost  alone  in  having 
made  a  significant  contribution  to  democratic  theory  and  practice. 
But  that  contribution,  however  historically  important,  is  extremely 
limited  in  scope.  From  the  doctrine  of  the  fatherhood  of  god  has 
been  derived  the  notion  of  the  brotherhood,  and  therefore  the 
equality,  of  man.  This  concept,  based  upon  Christ's  revelation,  is 
perhaps  our  sole  authority  for  the  statement  commonly  made  that 
men  are  or  should  be  politically  equal  to  each  other.  Christian 
doctrine  has  little  else  to  offer  in  this  field  of  thought  and  Christian 
custom  adds  nothing  but  some  monastic  techniques  of  debate  which 
could  as  readily  have  derived  from  Buddhism.  Much  has  been  made 
of  particular  texts,  like  that  of  rendering  to  Caesar  the  things  that  are 
Caesar's.  But  the  unreality  of  conclusions  based  on  such  a  text  is 

'  See  English  democratic  ideas  in  the  Seventeenth  Century.  G.  P.  Goocli.  2nd  ed. 
Cambridge,  1927.  See  also  The  Good  Old  Cause,  the  English  Revolution  of  1640-60. 
Christopher  Hill  and  Edmund  Dell.  London,  1949. 


DEMOCRACY     JUSTIFIED     BY     RELIGION  193 

manifest.  Christ  was  obviously  not  concerned  with  pohtics  at  all. 
What  he  had  to  say  on  the  subject  was  not  intended  as  political 
guidance  and  can  mean  very  little  when  taken  from  its  context.  Christ 
having  taught  that  men  are  brothers  in  the  faith,  a  later  theorist  can 
explain  the  inference  that  all  adult  citizens  should  be  equally  entitled 
to  vote.  But  that  was  not  what  Christ  was  talking  about.  That  was  not 
the  message  he  was  trying  to  convey.  We  have  no  means  of  knowing 
what  he  would  have  thought  of  a  ballot-box  had  he  been  shown  one, 
but  what  evidence  there  is  would  indicate  no  likelihood  of  his  express- 
ing even  the  most  polite  interest.  Attempts  to  extract  political  advice 
from  the  new  Testament  are  unscholarly,  dishonest  or  absurd. 

But  there  has  been  one  religious  leader  to  whom  politics  mattered 
rather  more.  This  was  Mahatma  Gandhi.  If  the  democracy  of  the 
future  is  to  be  based  upon  revealed  religion,  Gandhi  must  clearly  be 
the  prophet  to  whom  democrats  must  turn.  Of  recent  years,  Gandhi 
is,  in  fact,  almost  alone  in  having  anything  new  or  useful  to  say  about 
democracy.  He  is  and  will  almost  certainly  remain  the  greatest 
democratic  thinker  of  the  twentieth  century.  But  the  ideals  in  which 
Gandhi  believed  were  rooted  in  Hindu  soil.  He  was  well  acquainted 
with  Christian  doctrines,  some  of  which  he  could  approve,  but  he 
stood  apart  from  such  democratic  thought  as  can  be  traced  back  to 
ancient  Greece.  He  was  too  religious  a  man  to  accept  any  separation 
of  religious,  social  and  political  ideas.  As  Nirmal  Kumar  Bose  puts  it: 

The  foundation  of  Mahatma  Gandhi's  life  is  formed  by  his  firm 
faith  in  God.  He  looks  upon  God  as  that  Universal  Being  which  en- 
compasses everything  and  of  which  humanity  is  one  small  part.  God 
is  also  the  Law  working  behind  all  that  manifests  itself  to  us  through 
the  senses;  for  the  Law  and  the  Law-maker  are  not  distinguishable 
from  one  another.  .  .  .  The  highest  aim  of  human  life  is  to  try  to  dis- 
cover the  Law,  and  while  so  doing  to  purify  every  act  of  our  life  in 
conformity  with  the  Law,  in  so  far  as  it  has  been  revealed  to  us  by 
enquiry.^ 

With  this  faith,  Gandhi  built  up  a  body  of  political  ideas  in  which 
the  existence  and  the  will  of  God  is  rather  assumed  than  proved.  His 
knowledge  of  God  was  gained  and  strengthened  by  personal  religious 
experience.  His  conception  of  God,  although  subtle  and  comprehen- 
sive, allowed  him  to  receive  direct  and  personal  guidance.  He  heard 
'Voices'  and  in  this  resembled  both  Socrates  and  Joan  of  Arc.^  Nor 
was  he  prepared  to  prove  the  existence  of  God  by  any  purely  rational 
argument.  His  belief  amounted  to  a  certainty  in  itself.  As  against  this, 
he  wanted  his  ideal  State  to  be  secular.  He  would  have  no  State 

'■  Studies  in  Gandhism.  Nirmal  Kumar  Bose.  Calcutta,  2nd  ed.,  1947.  p.  337. 
=  The  Political  Philosophy  of  Mahatma  Gandhi.  Gopinath  Dhawan.  Ahmedabad, 
1946.  p.  48. 


194  THE     EVOLUTION     OF    POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

religion  even  if  there  were  doctrinal  agreement  among  all.  'If  I  were 
a  dictator,  religion  and  State  would  be  separate.  I  swear  by  my 
religion.  I  will  die  for  it.  But  it  is  my  personal  affair.  The  State  has 
nothing  to  do  with  it.  .  .  .'^  In  this  there  is  an  apparent  contradiction. 
He  would  have  the  State  secular  but  calls  in  God  to  draw  up  the 
constitution.  The  process  of  reasoning  by  which  he  would  justify 
his  political  ideas  is  an  essentially  religious  process  and  unacceptable 
to  those  who  would  question  his  first  axiom. 

Gandhi's  views  cannot,  however,  be  disposed  of  as  quickly  as  that. 
For  his  conclusions  are  at  least  partly  based  upon  a  worldly  experi- 
ence which  his  critics  must  allow  to  be  valid.  His  observation  was 
exceptionally  acute  and  he  had  a  wide  and  practical  knowledge  of 
affairs.  He  was  a  barrister-at-law,  not  without  practice.  He  had 
travelled  in  Europe  and  South  Africa,  organised  an  ambulance  Corps, 
edited  a  Journal  and  made  himself  the  leader  of  a  political  party.  He 
might  be  a  saint  but  he  was  certainly  not  a  fool.  And,  as  compared 
with  many  theorists,  he  knew  what  he  was  talking  about.  He  realised, 
as  he  was  bound  to  do,  that  politics  are,  at  best,  an  unavoidable  evil. 
'If  I  seem  to  take  part  in  polities',  he  said,  'it  is  only  because  politics 
to-day  encircle  us  like  the  coils  of  a  snake.  .  .  .'^ 

In  the  ideal  State,  he  held,  like  Karl  Marx,  politics  would  become 
needless.  Until  then,  they  are  unavoidable,  even  for  one  whose  main 
interests  are  religious.  As  he  put  it,  'those  who  say  that  religion  has 
nothing  to  do  with  politics,  do  not  know  what  religion  means'.-'  He 
might  have  added  that  they  do  not  know  what  politics  mean  either. 

It  would  have  been  at  least  normal  for  Gandhi  to  have  returned 
from  his  travels  to  India,  convinced  (as  so  many  Indians  have  been 
convinced)  that  all  India  needed  was  independence  and  a  democracy 
on  western  lines.  But  Gandhi  wanted  to  be  free  of  English  ideas  as 
well  as  free  of  English  control,  and  the  impression  he  gained  of 
British  democracy  was  that  it  was  a  dismal  failure.  It  leads,  he 
thought,  to  nothing  but  imperialism,  exploitation,  corruption, 
instability  and  war.  Parliaments  he  thought  a  dreary  waste  of  time 
and  money.  He  considered  the  Members  of  Parliament  hypocritical, 
selfish  and  lazy.  The  conclusions  they  reached  were  not  even  final. 
'What  is  done  to-day  may  be  undone  tomorrow'.^  He  thought  the 
voters  as  fickle  as  Parliament,  led  by  dishonest  journalism  and 
exploited  by  the  ruling  classes.  He  summarised  his  conclusions  in 
1934  in  these  words: — 

Western  democracy  is  on  its  trial.  If  it  has  already  proved  a  failure, 
may  it  be  reserved  to  India  to  evolve  the  true  science  of  democracy  by 

'  Gopinath  Dhawan.  op.  cit.  p.  239. 

^  Gopinath  Dhawan.  op.  cit.  p.  42. 

=  Ibid. 

*  Gopinath  Dhawan.  op.  cit.  pp.  332-333. 


DEMOCRACY    JUSTIFIED     BY    RELIGION  195 

giving  a  visible  demonstration.  .  .  .  Corruption  and  hypocrisy  ought 
not  to  be  the  inevitable  products  of  democracy,  as  they  undoubtedly 
are  today.  Nor  is  bulk  the  true  test  of  democracy.  True  democracy  is 
not  inconsistent  with  a  few  persons  representing  the  spirit,  the  hope  and 
the  aspiration  of  those  whom  they  claim  to  represent.  I  hold  that 
democracy  cannot  be  evolved  by  forcible  method.  The  spirit  of 
democracy  cannot  be  imposed  from  without.  It  has  to  come  from 
within. 

He  expands  this  last  thought  in  another  context,  maintaining  that 
the  right  to  vote  in  the  democratic  States  has  proved  a  burden  to  the 
people  because  it  has  been  obtained  by  pressure  rather  than  by 
acquiring  the  fitness  to  use  it.  In  his  view  a  right  could  only  be  earned 
by  the  performance  of  a  duty.  Self-government  in  a  State  could  only 
be  the  sum  total  of  the  self-control  shown  by  the  citizens.  He  did  not 
merely  deny  that  the  right  which  has  not  been  earned  is  wrongly 
acquired.  He  denied  that  it  had  been  acquired  at  all.  'The  true  source 
of  rights  is  duty  .  .  .'  he  said  publicly  in  1925.  'If  leaving  duties  un- 
performed we  run  after  rights,  they  will  escape  us  like  a  will  o'  the 
wisp.  The  more  we  pursue  them  the  further  they  will  fly'.  Gandhi  was 
not  uninfluenced  by  western  ideas.  He  corresponded  with  Tolstoy. 
He  had  once  fallen  under  the  spell  of  Ruskin.^  But  for  western  demo- 
cratic practice  he  had  no  use  at  all. 

What  he  had  recognised  was  the  dilemma  which  the  Greeks  had 
found  in  their  earliest  experiments  in  democratic  rule.  In  any  naturally 
formed  human  society  one  effect  of  civilisation  will  be  to  divide 
people  into  rich  and  poor.  Make  the  people  sovereign  and  the  poor 
will  use  the  machinery  of  government  to  dispossess  the  rich.  By  the 
time  they  have  done  so  the  government  will  have  become  an  over- 
centralised  tyranny,  probably  under  a  dictator.  The  whole  sequence  is 
of  a  kind  familiar  to  the  Hindus,  resembling  their  own  conception  of 
the  Wheel  of  Life.  And  Gandhi  saw  that  the  only  escape  is  to  remove 
the  desire  for  gain  which  is  the  motive  force  throughout.  He  thought 
of  the  wealthy  and  the  downtrodden  as  both  criminal  and  both  in 
fact  committing  the  same  crime.  The  organising  of  large-scale  in- 
dustry, the  source  of  disproportionate  wealth  and  poverty,  is  itself 
sinful.  Gopinath  Dhawan  thus  summarises  Gandhi's  views  on  this 
question: — 

.  .  .  Conscious  adoption  of  handicrafts  is  an  important  step  towards 
world  peace  in  so  far  as  mass  production,  which  can  only  subsist  on  the 
control  of  large  markets,  is  the  mainspring  of  modern  international 
rivalries,  imperialistic  exploitation  and  wars. 

In  national  affairs  large-scale  industry  vitiates  democracy.  For  it 
leads  to  concentration  of  economic  power  and  this  implies  corres- 

'  Gandhi,  an  Autobiography.  Trans,  by  Mahadev  Desai.  London,  1949.  p.  248. 


196  THE    EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

ponding  concentration  of  political  power  and  the  ever  present  possi- 
bility of  the  abuse  of  such  power. 

Mass  production  degrades  workers  and  deprives  them  of  their 
dignity  and  worth.  It  uproots  them  from  the  purity  and  naturalness  of 
domestic  atmosphere  in  rural  areas,  baulks  their  creative  urge  and 
turns  them  into  mere  statistical  units. ^ 

Gandhi  emphasised  that  it  is  not  merely  capitalism  that  is  evil  but 
industry  itself. 

Machinery  has  begun  to  desolate  Europe.  Ruination  is  knocking 
at  the  English  gates.  Machinery  is  the  chief  symbol  of  modern 
civilization,  it  represents  a  great  sin.  .  .  . 

Industrialism  is,  I  am  afraid,  going  to  be  a  curse  for  mankind. 
Industrialism  depends  entirely  on  your  capacity  to  exploit,  on  foreign 
markets  being  open  to  you,  and  on  the  absence  of  competitors.  .  .  . 
The  fact  is  that  this  industrial  civilization  is  a  disease  because  it  is  all 
evil.^ 

Here  he  was  at  one  with  William  Morris  and  G.  K.  Chesterton. 
Nor  would  he  agree  for  a  moment  with  those  who  think  to  mitigate 
the  evils  of  industrialism  by  a  policy  of  nationalisation.  For  that 
could  only  mean  transferring  to  the  State  a  power  which  is  quite 
dangerous  enough  even  in  the  hands  of  individuals. 

I  look  upon  an  increase  in  the  power  of  the  state  with  the  greatest 
fear  because,  although  while  apparently  doing  good  by  minimizing 
exploitation,  it  does  the  greatest  harm  to  mankind  by  destroying 
individuality  which  lies  at  the  root  of  all  progress. 

The  state  represents  violence  in  a  concentrated  and  organized  form. 
The  individual  has  a  soul,  but  as  the  state  is  a  soulless  machine,  it  can 
never  be  weaned  from  violence  to  which  it  owes  its  very  existence. 

It  is  my  firm  conviction  that  if  the  state  suppressed  capitalism  by 
violence,  it  will  be  caught  in  the  coils  of  violence  itself  and  fail  to 
develop  non-violence  at  any  time. 

What  I  would  personally  prefer  would  be,  not  a  centralization  of 
power  in  the  hands  of  the  state  but  an  extension  of  the  sense  of  trustee- 
ship; as  in  my  opinion,  the  violence  of  private  ownership  is  less 
injurious  than  the  violence  of  the  state.'' 

Gandhi  saw  that  democracy  and  spiritual  unity  is  impossible  in  a 
State  torn  apart  by  the  conflict  between  the  rich  and  the  poor.  But  the 
only  way  to  bring  about  economic  equality  is  by  example  and 
argument. 

...  To  induce  the  rich  to  accept  the  ideal  of  economic  equality  and  hold 
their  wealth  in  trust  for  the  poor,  he  would  depend  upon  persuasion, 

'  Gopinath  Dhawan.  op.  cit.  p.  222. 

"  Studies  in  Gandhism.  Nirmal  Kumar  Bose.  2nd  ed.  Calcutta,  1947.  p.  30. 
^Selected  writings  of  Mahatma  Gandhi.   Selected   and   introduced   by   R.  Duncan. 
London,  1951.  pp.  244-245. 


DEMOCRACY    JUSTIFIED     BY     RELIGION  197 

education,  non-violent  non-co-operation  and  other  non-violent 
means.  According  to  Gandhiji  the  theory  of  the  trusteeship  of  the 
wealthy  for  their  superfluous  wealth  lies  at  the  root  of  the  doctrine  of 
equal  distribution.  The  only  alternative  to  trusteeship  is  confiscation 
through  violence.  But  by  resorting  to  violence  society  will  be  poorer 
'for  it  will  lose  the  gifts  of  a  man  who  knows  how  to  accumulate 
wealth'.  Non-violent  non-co-operation  is  the  infallible  means  to  bring 
about  trusteeship  because  the  rich  cannot  accumulate  wealth  without 
the  co-operation  of  the  poor  in  society.^ 

Gandhi  maintained  that  confiscation  of  private  wealth  is  a  crime  and 
one  that  defeats  its  own  end.  A  democracy  thus  based  on  violence 
will  not  be  a  democracy  at  all. 

What  sort  of  society  is  to  result  when  industry  and  capitalism  have 
been  abolished  by  non-violent  means?  Gandhi's  ideal  is  taken  from 
the  Indian  countryside.  Society  must  centre  on  the  co-operative 
village  as  a  self-governing  unit.  Power  must  be  decentralised  to  the 
utmost,  leaving  self-contained  villages  to  manage  their  own  affairs. 
Each  village  will  be  a  democracy  based  upon  individual  freedom. 

What  higher  organisation  will  there  be?  Gandhi's  ideal  was 

.  .  .  the  classless  and  Stateless  society,  a  state  of  self-regulated  en- 
lightened 'anarchy',  in  which  social  cohesion  will  be  maintained  by 
internal  and  non-coercive  external  sanctions.  But  as  this  ideal  is  not 
realizable,  he  has  an  attainable  middle  ideal  also — the  predominantly 
non-violent  State.  Retaining  the  State  in  this  second  best  society  is  a 
concession  to  human  imperfection. . . .  The  State  will  be  a  federation  of 
decentralized  democratic  rural  .  .  .  communities.  These  communities 
will  be  based  on  'voluntary  simplicity,  poverty  and  slowness'." 

Gandhi  left  very  little  for  the  State  to  do,  but  he  explained,  in 
outline,  how  its  affairs  should  be  conducted.  All  adult  and  working 
citizens  should  vote  for  village  representatives.  These  would  vote  in 
turn,  electing  district  representatives.  These  would  elect  provincial 
representatives  who  would  then  elect  a  president.  He  held  that  these 
indirect  elections  would  diminish  excitement,  bribery,  corruption 
and  violence.  His  ruling  bodies  were  to  have  a  relatively  small 
membership:  'True  democracy  is  not  inconsistent  with  a  few  persons 
representing  the  spirit,  the  hope  and  the  aspirations  of  those  whom 
they  claim  to  represent'.  For  government  he  wanted  'a  few  chosen 
servants  removable  at  the  will  of  the  nation'.^  For  president  he 
wanted  an  ascetic  and  saint. 

This  picture,  in  outline,  of  an  ideal  or  semi-ideal  State  is  attractive. 
In  so  far,  moreover,  as  Gandhi  was  basing  his  argument  on  political 
failures  he  had  seen  and  village  communities  which  he  knew,  he 

'  Gopinath  Dhawan.  op.  cit.  p.  221. 

^  Gopinath  Dhawan.  op.  cit.  pp.  382-383. 

'  Gopinath  Dhawan.  op.  cit.  p.  197. 


198  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

merits  very  careful  attention.  It  must,  however,  be  remembered  that 
he  derived  his  ideas  also  from  divine  revelation.  To  many,  ideas  so 
derived  are  acceptable.  But  Gandhi's  inspiration,  if  taken  as  evidence, 
extends  to  matters  still  more  doubtful.  High  in  his  list  of  principles 
came  that  of  prohibition.  Low  in  the  same  list  comes  that  of  Nature 
Cure,  based  on  the  idea  that  'Disease  is  impossible  where  there  is 
purity  of  thought'.  If  we  are  to  accept  Gandhi  as  an  inspired  prophet 
we  must  accept  not  only  his  political  principles  but  also  his  permitted 
drugs,  which  are  'earth,  sky,  air,  sunlight  and  water'.'  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  we  reject  his  literal  inspiration,  we  are  left  with  no  logical 
basis  upon  which  we  can  agree.  To  any  but  a  Hindu  his  axioms  may 
be  unacceptable. 


'  See  Duncan,  op.  cit.  Also  Reminiscences  of  Gandhiji.  Ed.  C.  Shukle.  Bombay,  1951. 
p.  101. 


CHAPTER    XVr 

Democracy  justified  by  Reason 


THE  doctrine  of  religious  equality  existed  side  by  side  in  eighteenth 
century  Europe  with  doctrines  of  equality  based  only  on  rational 
argument.  The  two  sorts  of  egalitarianism  meet  and  mingle  in  the 
American  Revolution.  They  merge,  above  all,  in  the  Declaration  of 
Independence,  passed  by  Congress  on  July  4th,  1776  and  signed  on 
the  19th.  It  was  written  by  Thomas  Jefferson,  the  impetus  which 
brought  it  into  being  coming  initially  from  North  Carolina  and 
Virginia.  Ten  States  voted  for  it,  three  against;  New  York  being  one. 
The  most  interesting  words  are  these: — 

We  hold  these  truths  to  be  self-evident,  that  all  men  are  created 
equal,  that  they  are  endowed  by  their  Creator  with  certain  unalienable 
Rights,  that  among  these  are  Life,  Liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  Happi- 
ness. That  to  secure  these  rights  Governments  are  instituted  among 
Men,  deriving  their  just  powers  from  the  consent  of  the  governed. 
That  whenever  any  Form  of  Government  becomes  destructive  of  these 
ends,  it  is  the  Right  of  the  People  to  alter  or  to  abolish  it.  .  .  } 

'The  document',  it  has  been  remarked  'is  full  of  Jefferson's  fervent 
spirit  and  personality,  and  its  ideals  were  those  to  which  his  life  was 
consecrated.  It  is  the  best  known  and  the  noblest  of  American  State 
papers.  .  .  .- 

Well  known  and  noble  the  words  may  be.  But  what  do  they  mean  ? 
As  for  the  axioms  stated,  they  were  not  self-evident  to  Jefferson,  for 
he  took  them  from  Locke.  They  were  not  self-evident  to  Locke  be- 
cause he  took  them  from  Hooker.  And  Hooker,  when  consulted, 
turns  out  to  be  less  certain  about  it  than  Locke  seems  to  have 
supposed.  In  any  case.  Hooker's  arguments  and  Jefferson's  alike 
assume  a  Creator  of  mankind  (as  mankind  now  is)  and  are  useless  to 
an  agnostic  and  useless  even  to  a  believer  in  the  theory  of  evolution, 
who  must  hold  that  man  (recognisable  as  such)  was  not  created  dit  all 
but  evolved  from  the  animals. 

It  is  of  particular  interest,  however,  to  see  how  Jefferson's  theory 
hovers  between  the  religious  and  the  rational.  The  existence  of  the 

'  The  American  Government.  E.  W.  Carter  and  C.  C.  Rohlfing.  New  York,  1952. 
Appendix. 

-  Encyclopaedia  Britannica  article  on  Declaration  of  Independence.  See  also 
Jejferson  and  tlie  Rights  of  Man.  D.  Malone.  Boston,  1951. 

199 


200  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

Creator  is  self-evident  and  so  are  his  main  intentions.  But  it  is  the 
people,  not  the  Creator,  who  have  established  government  and  their 
purpose  in  doing  so  is  known.  When  their  purposes  are  not  achieved, 
the  government  may  be  altered  or  abolished.  Whatever  theological 
basis  there  may  be  for  the  doctrine  that  men  are  created  equal,  it  is 
surely  doubtful  whether  Christ,  let  alone  Buddha,  would  have 
regarded  the  pursuit  of  happiness  as  an  inalienable  right.  Indeed,  few 
religious  thinkers  would  recommend  the  pursuit  of  happiness  at  all. 
Most  would  perhaps  agree  that  happiness  is  achieved  incidentally  by 
people  who  are  pursuing  something  else.  As  for  Jefferson's  theory 
about  the  origin  of  government,  it  is  wholly  mistaken.  The  function 
of  the  earliest  rulers  over  defined  States  was  to  make  the  crops  grow. 
They  were  not  appointed  to  secure  liberty  and  it  is  not  obvious  that 
the  builders  of  the  pyramids  ever  made  this  their  main  object  in  life. 
Jefferson's  theory  begins  with  doubtful  theology  and  ends  with  an 
historical  assertion  that  is  clearly  wrong.  Of  this  some  of  his  colleagues 
may  have  been  uneasily  aware.  Jefferson's  noble  sentiments  were  not, 
at  any  rate,  repeated  in  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  as 
drawn  up  and  agreed  on  17th  September,  1787. 
This  Constitution  begins  simply: — 

We  the  PEOPLE  of  the  United  States,  in  order  to  form  a  more 
perfect  Union,  establish  Justice,  insure  domestic  Tranquility,  provide 
for  the  common  Defence,  promote  the  general  Welfare,  and  secure  the 
Blessings  of  Liberty  to  ourselves  and  our  posterity,  do  ordain  and 
establish  this  Constitution  for  the  United  States  of  America.  .  .  . 

— and  so  gets  down  to  business  by  defining  the  relationship  between 
the  thirteen  States  and  the  Federal  Government.  And  it  may  well  be 
thought  that  the  principal  American  achievement  was  rather  in 
establishing  a  (more  or  less)  workable  Federation  than  in  proclaiming 
the  doctrine  of  human  equality,  concerning  which  the  several  States 
were  far  from  agreement.  Between  October,  1787,  and  August,  1788 
the  principal  architects  of  the  Constitution — Alexander  Hamilton, 
James  Madison  and  John  Jay — defended  it  in  the  pages  of  the 
Federalist^  with  the  object  of  securing  its  ratification  by  the  different 
States.  These  articles  in  the  Federalist  afford  an  early  and  authorita- 
tive commentary  upon  the  United  States  Constitution  and  have 
served  since  to  make  American  ideas  more  widely  known  and  more 
commonly  accepted. 

The  opposition  which  the  Federalist  arguments  were  designed  to 
overcome  came  from  those  intent  on  maintaining  the  autonomy  of  the 
several  States.  Their  objections  were  partly  met  by  the  provision  in  the 
Constitution  itself  of  a  strict  separation  of  powers  and  a  Supreme 

'  The  Federalist,  or  the  New  Constitution.  Alexander  Hamilton  and  others.  Ed.  by 
Max  Beloff.  Oxford,  1948. 


DEMOCRACY     JUSTIFIED     BY     REASON  201 

Court  vested  with  the  duty  of  safeguarding  the  Federal  agreement. 
Their  attention  was  also  drawn  to  two  possibilities  they  may  have 
overlooked;  one  being  that  the  colonies,  if  not  united,  would  be  vul- 
nerable to  external  aggression;  the  other  being  that  the  colonies,  if 
entirely  independent  or  united  in  several  groups,  would  certainly 
fight  each  other. 

...  To  presume  a  want  of  motives  for  such  contests  .  .  .  would  be  to 
forget  that  men  are  ambitious,  vindictive,  and  rapacious.  To  look  for  a 
continuation  of  harmony  between  a  number  of  independent  uncon- 
nected sovereignties,  situated  in  the  same  neighbourhood,  would  be 
to  disregard  the  uniform  course  of  human  events,  and  to  set  at  defiance 
the  accumulated  experience  of  ages.  .  .  . 

But  notwithstanding  the  concurring  testimony  of  experience  in  this 
particular,  there  are  still  to  be  found  visionary,  or  designing  men,  who 
stand  ready  to  advocate  the  paradox  of  perpetual  peace  between  the 
states,  though  dismembered  and  alienated  from  each  other.  The  genius 
of  republics,  they  say,  is  pacific;  the  spirit  of  commerce  has  a  tendency 
to  soften  the  manners  of  men.  .  .  . 

[But]  Have  republics  in  practice  been  less  addicted  to  war  than 
monarchies?  Are  not  the  former  administered  by  men  as  well  as  the 
latter?  Are  there  not  aversions,  predelictions,  rivalships,  and  desires  of 
unjust  acquisition,  that  affect  nations,  as  well  as  kings  ?  Are  not  popular 
assemblies  frequently  subject  to  the  impulse  of  rage,  resentment, 
jealousy,  avarice,  and  of  other  irregular  and  violent  propensities? 
.  .  .  Let  experience,  the  least  fallible  guide  of  human  opinions,  be 
appealed  to  for  an  answer  to  these  inquiries.^ 

It  will  be  apparent  that  the  framers  of  the  Constitution  lacked 
something  of  Jefferson's  idealistic  fervour.  Their  feet,  we  may  agree, 
were  on  the  ground.  But  they  lived,  nevertheless,  in  the  period  which 
led  up  to  and  included  the  French  Revolution,  and  the  connection 
between  American  and  French  ideas  was  close.  Symbolising  this 
connection  was  Tom  Paine  (1737-1809),  the  Quaker  teacher,  excise- 
man and  journalist  who  migrated  to  America  in  1775  and  took  an 
active  political  part  in  the  War  of  Independence.  He  wrote  a  book 
called  Common  Sense  in  1776,  the  year  in  which  most  of  the  indi- 
vidual states  were  drawing  up  their  own  State  Constitutions.  He  had 
considerable  influence  in  bringing  about  a  complete  break  with 
England,  demanding  independence  and  no  compromise.  He  played 
some  part  in  drawing  up  the  Declaration  of  the  Rights  of  Man  in  1789 
but  was  absent  in  France  when  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States 
was  drawn  up,  mainly  by  James  Madison,  in  1787.  When  the  French 
Revolution  began,  Paine  was  in  England,  where  he  presently  wrote 
the  Rights  of  Man  (1791)  in  answer  to  Burke's  Refections.  Elected 
member  for  Calais  in  the  French  Convention,  he  was  in  France  from 

'  The  Federalist,  No.  VI. 


202  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

1792  to  1801  returning  then  to  the  United  States  where  he  died  in 
1809  at  the  age  of  seventy-two.  His  life  thus  covers  and  connects  the 
American  and  French  Revolutions.  His  dissenting  background 
connects  him,  moreover,  with  the  English  Revolution  of  the  previous 
century.  His  views  are  summarised  in  the  Rights  of  Man  and  there 
can  be  no  doubt  of  his  influence  in  America,  in  France,  and  even  in 
England. 

Tom  Paine  wrote  Rights  of  Man}  to  confute  Burke  and  takes 
up  much  of  his  space  in  doing  so.  He  becomes  more  constructive 
when  he  begins  to  distinguish  between  governments,  dividing  them 
into  those  based  on  superstition,  those  based  on  power,  and  those 
based  upon  the  common  interests  of  society  and  the  common  rights  of 
man.  The  only  governments  he  will  admit  to  the  last  category  are 
those  of  the  United  States  and  France.  Elsewhere,"  however,  he 
divides  existing  governments  into  only  two  classes:  those  empowered 
by  election  and  representation  and  those  involving  hereditary 
succession.  'The  former  is  generally  known  by  the  name  of  republic; 
the  latter  by  that  of  monarchy  and  aristocracy'.  His  readers  are  left 
in  no  doubt  as  to  which  he  prefers.  'Those  two  distinct  and  opposite 
forms  erect  themselves  on  the  two  distinct  and  opposite  bases  of 
reason  and  ignorance.  .  .  .'^  On  reason,  therefore,  he  bases  'a  system 
of  principles  as  universal  as  truth  and  the  existence  of  man,  and 
combining  moral  with  political  happiness  and  national  prosperity'. 
His  principles  are  three  in  number,  as  follows: — 

I.  Men  are  born,  and  always  continue,  free  and  equal  in  respect  of 
their  rights.  Civil  distinctions,  therefore,  can  be  founded  only  on 
public  utility. 
II.  The  end  of  all  political  associations  is  the  preservation  of  the 
natural  and  imprescriptible  rights  of  man,  and  these  rights  are 
liberty,  property,  security,  and  resistance  of  oppression. 
III.  The  nation  is  essentially  the  source  of  all  sovereignty;  nor  can  any 
individual,  or  any  body  of  men,  be  entitled  to  any  authority 
which  is  not  expressly  derived  from  it. 

He  goes  on  to  explain  what  the  result  of  applying  these  principles 
will  be: — 

Monarchical  sovereignty,  the  enemy  of  mankind  and  the  source  of 
misery,  is  abolished;  and  sovereignty  itself  is  restored  to  its  natural 
and  original  place,  the  nation.  Were  this  the  case  throughout  Europe, 
the  cause  of  wars  would  be  taken  away. 

He  ends  happily  with  the  words  :^ 

'  Basic  Writings  of  Thomas  Paine.  Common  Sense.  Rig/its  of  Man.  Age  of  Reason. 
New  York,  1942.  See  p.  88  for  the  Declaration  of  the  Rights  of  Man. 
'Ibid.  p.  123. 
=  /bid.  p.  128. 
Ubid.  p.  131. 


DEMOCRACY     JUSTIFIED     BY     REASON  203 

From  what  we  can  now  see,  nothing  of  reform  in  the  political  world 
ought  to  be  held  improbable.  It  is  an  age  of  revolutions  in  which  every 
thing  may  be  looked  for.  The  intrigue  of  courts,  by  which  the  system  of 
war  is  kept  up,  may  provoke  a  confederation  of  nations  to  abolish  it: 
and  an  European  congress  to  patronize  the  progress  of  free  govern- 
ment ...  is  an  event  nearer  in  probability  than  once  were  the  revolu- 
tions and  alliance  of  France  and  America. 

Tom  Paine's  three  principles  are  the  first  three  included  in  the 
French  Declaration  of  the  Rights  of  Man  and  he  may  well  have  been 
the  author  of  them.  The  Declaration  begins  with  a  preamble  stating 
that  all  public  misfortunes  are  due  to  ignorance,  neglect  or  contempt 
of  human  rights,  which  are  'natural,  imprescriptible,  and  unalien- 
able'. The  Rights  listed  in  the  French  version  number  seventeen  in  all, 
covering  the  general  topics  of  liberty,  law,  arrest,  penalties,  legal 
procedure,  freedom  of  opinion  and  publication,  the  separation  of 
powers  and  the  sanctity  of  property. 

In  reading  the  considerable  body  of  literature  evoked  by  the 
American  and  French  Revolutions,  the  student  is  necessarily  struck 
by  the  contrast  between  theory  and  practice.  The  American  doctrine 
of  equality  did  not  apply  to  women,  red  Indians  or  negroes.  French- 
men who  became  enthusiastic  about  the  Rights  of  Man  could  proclaim 
clauses  VIII  and  IX  against  a  background  noise  provided  by  the 
guillotine.  True  that  contrast  would  not  invalidate  the  principles 
themselves  if  we  could  only  discover  the  proofs  of  their  validity.  But 
Tom  Paine  and  his  French  contemporaries  generally  follow  the 
practice  of  Jefferson,  making  an  axiom  of  the  proposition  they  have 
to  prove.  'We  hold  these  truths  to  be  self-evident.  .  .  .'  No  argument 
can  follow  from  such  a  beginning  as  that.  In  fact,  however,  as  we  have 
seen,  these  great  truths  became  self-evident  only  after  those  who 
stated  them  had  read  certain  older  publications.  The  roots  of  the  non- 
religious  doctrine  of  equality  are  to  be  found  in  the  French  literature 
of  a  somewhat  earlier  date.  To  that  literature  we  should  turn  for  the 
proof  of  assertions  later  found  to  be  self-evident. 

Every  student  of  European  history  is  sooner  or  later  called  upon  to 
memorise  the  causes  of  the  French  Revolution;  one  of  which  usually 
turns  out  to  be  the  writings  of  Voltaire  and  Rousseau.  Voltaire's 
direct  responsibility  might  be  difficult  to  prove,  it  is  clear,  on  the 
other  hand,  that  some  ideas  of  the  day  can  be  traced  to  Rousseau.  It 
is  no  doubt  for  that  reason  among  others  that  the  student  is  advised 
to  read  the  Social  Contract.  The  case  for  including  that  work  as  a 
cause  of  the  revolution  is  weakened  somewhat  by  lack  of  evidence 
that  it  was  widely  read.  M.  Daniel  Mornet  analysed  the  library 
catalogues  of  five  hundred  contemporaries  of  Louis  XV  and  dis- 
covered that  whereas  165  of  them  included  Nouvelle  Heloise,  only 


204  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

one  contained  the  Conlrat  Social.  Easily  the  most  popular  work, 
incidentally,  was  Bayle's  Dictionnaire,  288  copies  of  which  figured  in 
his  list.  As  for  J.  J.  Rousseau,  his  more  popular  books,  like  Emile, 
may  have  had  a  generally  unsettling  influence.  The  Conlrat  Social, 
on  the  other  hand,  supposed  origin  of  egalitarian  doctrine,  had  not 
only,  as  it  seems,  a  limited  circulation;  it  had  also,  in  another  way, 
only  a  limited  effect.  While  Rousseau  admittedly  discusses  politics  in 
the  abstract  without  expressing  admiration  for  things  as  they  were  in 
France,  he  is  far  from  preaching  immediate  revolt.  He  has  not  filled 
his  book  with  sedition  from  cover  to  cover.  What,  after  all,  does  it 
contain?  It  starts  off  bravely  with  the  sentence  'Man  is  born  free,  and 
everywhere  he  is  in  chains'.^  There  follows  the  theory  of  the  original 
contract,  which  is  not  his  own,  and  the  theory  of  the  'General  Will', 
which  remains  rather  obscure. 

What,  however,  of  Democracy?  Does  he  in  fact  prove  what  Paine 
and  Jeff'erson  merely  chose  to  assume  ?  He  does  not  discuss  democracy 
until  he  reaches  Book  III,  and  then  he  writes: — 

Taking  the  term  in  its  strict  sense,  there  never  has  existed,  and  never 
will  exist,  any  true  democracy.  It  is  contrary  to  the  natural  order  that 
the  majority  should  govern  and  that  the  minority  should  be  governed.^ 

Democracy,  he  suggests,  implies  a  small  State,  simplicity  of  man- 
ners, equality  in  rank  and  fortune  and  the  entire  absence  of  anything 
approaching  luxury.  Without  those  conditions,  democracy  is  too 
liable  to  cause  civil  war  and  riot.  'If  there  were  a  nation  of  gods,  it 
would  be  governed  democratically.  So  perfect  a  government  is  un- 
suited  to  men'.  Nor  (see  Chapter  XV,  Book  111)  will  he  allow  that 
deputies  or  representatives  can  even  plausibly  simulate  democracy. 
When  a  people  sinks  so  low  as  to  elect  representatives — as  the  result, 
no  doubt,  of  wealth  and  indolence — their  freedom  is  lost.^ 

Jean  Jacques  Rousseau  was  a  native  of  Geneva  and  had  seen 
something  of  democracy  in  the  Alpine  valleys.  He  concluded  that 
what  was  possible  there  might  not  be  so  practicable  in  other  lands. 
The  Abbe  Raynal  came  to  the  same  conclusion  and  wrote  of  the 
Swiss  as  follows: — 

.  .  .  From  the  top  of  their  barren  mountains,  they  behold,  groaning 
under  the  oppression  of  tyranny,  whole  nations  which  nature  hath 
placed  in  more  plentiful  countries,  while  they  enjoy  in  peace  the  fruits 
of  their  labour,  of  their  frugality,  of  their  moderation,  and  of  all  the 
virtues  that  attend  upon  liberty.  .  .  .  Undoubtedly,  the  love  of  riches 
hath  somewhat  altered  that  amiable  simplicity  of  manners,  in  such  of 
the  cantons  where  the  arts  and  commerce  have  made  any  considerable 

'  The  Social  Contract.  J.  J.  Rousseau.  Trans,  by  H.  J.  Tozer.  London,  1924.  p.  100. 
^  Rousseau,  op.  cit.  p.  159. 
^  Rouseau.  op.  cit.  p.  186. 


DEMOCRACY    JUSTIFIED     BY    REASON  205 

progress;  but  the  features  of  their  primitive  character  are  not  entirely 
effaced,  and  they  still  retain  a  kind  of  happiness  unknown  to  other 
men.^ 

They  also  still  retained  what  is  more  important  from  our  point  of 
view — a  clear  idea  of  the  circumstances  in  which  democracy  can 
flourish.  This  idea  Rousseau  also  retained,  expressing  his  preference 
for  small  States  and  being  prepared  to  explain  (although  he  never 
actually  did  so)  how  they  might  combine  in  a  federation  for  mutual 
protection. 

One  of  Rousseau's  most  significant  contributions  to  political 
thought  is  contained  in  Chapter  IX  of  Book  III.  It  reads  as  follows : — 

When  ...  it  is  asked  absolutely  which  is  the  best  government,  an 
insoluble  and  likewise  indeterminate  question  is  propounded.  .  .  . 

But  if  it  were  asked  by  what  sign  it  can  be  known  whether  a  given 
people  is  well  or  ill  governed,  that  would  be  a  different  matter,  and  the 
question  of  fact  might  be  determined. 

It  is,  however,  not  settled,  because  every  one  wishes  to  decide  it  in 
his  own  way.  .  .  . 

.  .  .  What  is  the  object  of  political  association?  It  is  the  preservation 
and  prosperity  of  its  members.  And  what  is  the  surest  sign  that  they 
are  preserved  and  prosperous?  It  is  their  number  and  population.  Do 
not,  then,  go  and  seek  elsewhere  for  this  sign  so  much  discussed.  All 
other  things  being  equal,  the  government  under  which,  without  ex- 
ternal aids,  without  naturalization  and  without  colonies,  the  citizens 
increase  and  multiply  most,  is  infallibly  the  best.  That  under  which  a 
people  diminishes  and  decays  is  the  worst.  Statisticians,  it  is  now  your 
business;  reckon,  measure,  compare." 

What  Rousseau  here  suggests  may  not  be  the  whole  answer  to  the 
problem  but  it  marks  an  enormous  advance  in  thought.  It  puts  him 
at  once  in  a  different  class,  and  a  writer  like  Tom  Paine  is  not  to  be 
compared  with  him. 

Democratic  thinkers  of  the  late  eighteenth  century  rested  their  case 
very  largely  on  the  success  of  the  American  colonists  in  achieving 
their  independence.  Rousseau's  background  was,  of  course,  different. 
He  thought  of  Switzerland  and  also,  at  one  time,  of  the  'Noble 
Savages'  allegedly  discovered  by  Captain  Cook.  But  several  other 
French  authors  were  interested  in  interpreting  the  apparent  success 
of  the  American  experiment.  And,  like  Rousseau,  they  saw  that  the 
political  problem  has  its  economic  aspect.  It  was  one  of  these,  the 
Abbe  Raynal,  who  pointed  out  that  equality  and  liberty  are  not 
compatible  with  each  other.  Given  equality,  men  stagnate.  Given 
liberty,  they  are  soon  unequal.  And  liberty,  he  considered,  was 
preferable. 

'  America:  Ideal  and  Reality.  W.  Stark.  London,  1947.  p.  27. 
^  Rousseau,  op.  cit.  p.  175. 


206  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

It  hath  been  said,  that  we  were  all  born  equals;  but  that  is  not  true. 
That  we  had  all  the  same  rights.  I  do  not  know  what  rights  are,  where 
there  is  an  inequality  of  talents  and  of  strength,  and  no  guarantee  nor 
sanction  .  .  .  nor  do  I  know  in  what  sense  it  can  be  true  that  we  enjoy 
the  same  qualities  of  body  and  of  mind.  There  is  an  original  inequality 
between  men  which  nothing  can  remedy.  It  must  last  forever;  and  all 
that  can  be  obtained  from  the  best  legislation  will  not  be  to  destroy  it, 
but  to  prevent  its  abuses.  .  .  . 

The  chimerical  idea  of  an  equality  of  stations  is  the  most  dangerous 
one  that  can  be  adopted  in  a  civilized  society.  To  preach  this  system  to 
the  people,  is  not  to  put  them  in  mind  of  their  rights;  it  is  leading  them 
on  to  assassination  and  plunder.  It  is  letting  domestic  animals  loose, 
and  transforming  them  into  wild  beasts.  .  .  .^ 

Raynal  nevertheless  wants  inequality  to  be  kept  within  bounds  and 
sees  the  abolition  of  the  right  of  inheritance  as  the  best  means  of 
securing  this  end.  He  also  wants  to  ensure  that  trade  should  not 
predominate  over  agriculture.  America,  he  considers,  gains  much 
from  its  primitive  conditions,  which  give  a  high  measure  of  both 
liberty  and  equality;  but  he  notes  that  there  is  slavery  there,  too. 

It  is  in  the  colonies  that  men  lead  such  a  rural  life  as  was  the 
original  destination  of  mankind,  best  suited  to  the  health  and  increase 
of  the  species:  probably  they  enjoy  all  the  happiness  consistent  with 
the  frailty  of  human  nature.  .  .  .^ 

But  he  bids  America  beware  of  gold,  of  luxury,  of  too  great  in- 
equality of  wealth.  He  urges  the  Americans  finally  to  ensure  that 
liberty  should  have  'a  firm  and  unalterable  basis  in  the  wisdom  of 
your  constitutions'. 

Another  French  thinker,  Gabriel  de  Mably,  also  faced  the  problem 
of  liberty  and  equality  but  came  to  the  opposite  conclusion.  'Equality' 
he  wrote,  'is  necessary  to  men.  Nature  made  it  a  law  for  our  earliest 
ancestors  and  declared  her  intentions  so  clearly  that  it  was  impossible 
to  ignore  them.  .  .  .  Did  she  not  give  to  all  men  the  same  organs,  the 
same  wants,  the  same  reason?'  To  achieve  equality  he  is  prepared  to 
sacrifice  wealth.  He  thinks  that  poverty,  as  existed  in  Sparta,  makes 
for  happiness  but  he  admits  that  the  danger  is  one  of  stagnation.  The 
remedy  for  stagnation  lies  in  the  institution  of  private  property.  And 
from  that  springs  inequality,  wealth,  poverty  and  slavery.  Essentially, 
he  thinks  'our  evils  are  without  remedy'.  But  there  can  be  palliatives 
and  he  suggests  what  they  should  be.  'I  say  in  a  word  that  good 
legislation  should  continually  break  up  and  divide  the  fortunes 
which  avarice  and  ambition  continually  labour  to  amass'.  As  a 
second-best  to  primitive  equality,  he  thinks  it  best  to  balance  against 
each  other  the  forces  of  Monarchy,  Aristocracy  and  Democracy. 

1  America:  Ideal  and  Reality.  W.  Stark.  London,  1947.  p.  23, 
'  Stark,  W.  op.  cit.  p.  33. 


DEMOCRACY     JUSTIFIED     BY     REASON  207 

But  what  is  more  interesting  is  that  Mably  perceives  that  American 
political  equality  must  be  fictitious  if  combined  with  inequalities  of 
wealth  and  the  seeds  of  aristocracy  imported  from  England. 

A  spirit  of  commerce  will,  in  my  opinion,  soon  become  the  general 
and  predominant  spirit  of  the  inhabitants  of  your  cities.^ 

Wealth  will  result,  and  poverty,  and  then  the  beginnings  of  class 
war. 

With  the  manners  we  have  in  Europe,  and  which  probably  are  al- 
ready too  general  in  America,  wealth  must  at  last  usurp  an  absolute 
empire.  All  efforts  made  to  oppose  it  will  be  fruitless;  but  it  is  not 
impossible,  by  many  precautions,  to  prevent  this  empire  from  becom- 
ing tyrannical.- 

That  is  the  most  that  Mably  hopes  for  and  more  perhaps  than  he 
thinks  will  be  achieved. 

Brissot  was  the  author  who  admired  the  United  States  with  least 
reservation.  He  was  there  in  1788  and  published  his  Travels  in  1791. 
He  maintains  that  the  best  State  is  that  which  ensures  equality  by  a 
wide  distribution  of  property.  There  would  always  be  the  rich, 
perhaps,  but  we  must  avoid  having  extreme  poverty.  He  advocates 
property  (rather  than  employment)  for  all.  The  peasant  farmer,  he 
thinks,  has  independence,  plenty  and  happiness  in  return  for  patience, 
industry  and  labour. 

It  is  in  a  country  life  in  America,  that  true  happiness  is  to  be  found 
by  him  who  is  wise  enough  to  make  it  consist  in  tranquillity  of  soul,  in 
the  enjoyment  of  himself  and  of  nature.  What  is  the  fatiguing  agitation 
of  our  great  cities,  compared  to  this  delicious  calmness  ?3 

It  is,  of  course,  the  northern  States  he  admires,  and  especially  the 
people  of  Boston  and  the  Quakers,  for  their  good  sense  and  sim- 
plicity. Of  the  Quakers  he  wrote  'Renouncing  all  external  pleasures, 
music,  theatres  and  shows,  they  are  devoted  to  their  duties  as  citizens, 
to  their  families,  and  to  their  business'.  He  remarks  that  they  will 
have  no  theatre  in  Philadelphia.  To  preserve  simplicity  Brissot  thinks 
it  essential  to  restrain  commerce  and  industry.  Manufactures  'gather 
a  multitude  of  individuals  whose  physique  and  morals  decline  to- 
gether; they  accustom  and  form  man  for  servitude.  .  .  .'  They  tend,  in 
fact,  to  produce  aristocracy.  Brissot  evidently  feared  (while  denying) 
that  American  wealth  would  soon  corrupt  the  original  ideals  of 
equality. 

One  other  author  must  be  mentioned  and  that  is  Chastellux,  a 
French  aristocrat,  philosopher  and  soldier  who  served  in  America 

•  Stark,  W.  op.  cit.  p.  54. 
-  Ibid.  p.  55. 
=  Ibid.  p.  93. 


208  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

during  the  War  of  Independence  (1780-82)  and  published  his  impres- 
sions soon  afterwards.  He  drew  the  usual  contrast  between  North 
and  South.  He  noted  both  the  democratic  constitution  and  the 
growing  wealth  and  wondered  whether  they  were  compatible.  He  put 
the  question  to  Mr.  Samuel  Adams,  who  maintained  that  the  consti- 
tution balanced  any  growth  of  aristocracy  by  its  counterpoise  of 
monarchy  and  democracy.  Chastellux  was  unconvinced  and  thought 
that,  with  great  differences  of  wealth,  democracy  would  become  a 
meaningless  form  and,  more  than  that,  a  dangerous  fiction.  Socially, 
he  saw  that  approximate  equality  of  wealth  is  essential  to  democratic 
rule.  But  he  states  his  objection  to  that  equality  on  other  grounds.  He 
cannot  see  that  it  is  compatible  with  the  arts.  He  loathed  the  Quakers 
as  soon  as  he  saw  them.  'Great  musicians',  he  writes  'are  oftener  to 
be  met  with  in  the  courts  of  despots,  than  in  republics'.  He  argues, 
further,  that  the  man  who  really  enjoys  retirement  in  the  country 
must  have  been  educated  in  a  city. 

.  .  .  retirement  is  sterile  for  the  man  without  information.  Now  the 
information  is  to  be  acquired  best  in  towns.  Let  us  not  confound  the 
man  retired  into  the  country,  with  the  man  educated  in  the  country. 
The  former  is  the  most  perfect  of  his  species,  and  the  latter  frequently 
does  not  merit  to  belong  to  it.^ 

But  Chastellux  agreed  with  Brissot,  with  Mably  and  Raynal  in 
one  thing,  that  the  United  States  would  not  always  remain  the  ideal 
country  of  liberty  and  equality.  In  point  of  fact,  the  predictions  made 
were  almost  immediately  justified.  A  wealthy  governing  class  appeared 
in  the  very  first  Congress  and  was  indeed  championed  by  John 
Adams,  the  first  President  after  Washington.  He  pointed  out,  as 
against  the  egalitarians,  that  equality  of  property  is  impossible.  There 
must  always  be  gentlemen,  he  inferred,  of  greater  wealth,  intelligence 
and  education.  No  pure  democracy  can  exist.  Class  differences  were 
there,  as  we  know,  from  the  beginning  and  were  to  become  more 
acute.  The  ideal  upheld  was  not  that  of  equality  but  that  of  liberty. 
Nor  is  it  surprising  that  the  Americans,  given  their  choice,  should 
have  chosen  as  they  did.  For,  in  coming  to  the  New  World,  it  was 
freedom  they  had  sought. 


Stark,  W.  op.  cit.  p.  78. 


CHAPTER    XVII 

Democracy  justified  by  Utility 


THE  French  Revolution  was  the  result  of  earlier  movements  of 
which  the  American  Revolution  was  the  most  important.  It 
was  a  violent  experience;  so  violent  indeed  that  France  has  had  no 
stable  system  of  government  since,  and  certainly  has  none  now.  It 
achieved  swift  and  startling  results — the  confiscation  of  crown  and 
church  and  noble  property,  the  suppression  of  the  monasteries,  the 
abolition  of  tithes,  the  abolition  of  titles  and  the  destruction  of  all 
hereditary  privilege.  The  Revolution  was  accompanied  or  followed  by 
the  redivision  of  France  into  Departments,  a  new  currency,  the 
decimal  system  in  weights  and  measures,  a  new  code  of  laws,  a  new 
currency  and  a  new  calendar.  Various  political  systems  were  tried  in 
rapid  succession.  With  frightful  bloodshed  monarchy  gave  way  to 
republic,  democracy  to  mob-rule  and  anarchy,  and  anarchy  to 
military  dictatorship.  Dictatorship  became  monarchy,  which  was 
replaced  by  a  republic,  then  by  a  despotism  and  then  by  a  republic 
again.  It  is  too  early  to  say  what  the  final  form  will  be  when,  if  ever, 
stability  is  regained. 

But  while  the  actual  experience  of  France  is  not  wholly  encourag- 
ing, the  ideas  expressed  at  the  time  of  the  Revolution  have  been  given 
almost  permanent  currency.  These  were  briefly  summarised  at  the 
time  in  the  convenient  slogan  'Liberty,  Equality  and  Fraternity'.  Nor 
was  this  slogan  entirely  meaningless.  Liberty  of  thought,  speech, 
religion  and  meeting  were  more  or  less  established.  Equality  before 
the  law  was  more  or  less  achieved.  Political  equality  was  gained  and 
economic  equality  left  unattempted.  Perhaps,  however,  the  most 
permanent  and  characteristic  result  of  the  Revolution  was  the 
creation  of  the  secular  state — a  thing  still  unknown  in  England  or  the 
United  States.  For  the  rest,  it  is  not  clear  that  the  French  Revolution 
made  any  notable  contribution  to  political  thought.  The  thinking 
had  been  done  beforehand  and  no  orator  of  the  revolutionary  era  was 
able  to  progress  much  further  than  earlier  thinkers  except  perhaps 
in  secularism.  Granted  that  a  measure  of  liberty  and  equality  was 
gained,  no  answer  was  found  to  the  question  already  posed  in 
America;  namely,  whether  political  equality  is  of  much  value  among 
people  economically  unequal,  and  how  liberty  can  be  upheld  in  a 

209 


210  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

State  where  economic  equality  has  been  established  by  force.  Gen- 
erally speaking,  we  shall  look  in  vain  for  any  novelty  in  French 
political  thought  after  the  Revolution. 

More  interesting  was  the  development  of  political  ideas  in  England 
between  1776  and  1832;  a  development  largely  centred  upon  Jeremy 
Bentham.  His  was  the  intellect  behind  the  English  Radicals.  Bentham 
was  essentially  a  law  reformer  and  codifier,  his  political  thought 
being  incidental  to  his  initial  quarrel  with  lawyers  in  general  and 
Blackstone  in  particular.  He  wrote  his  Fragment  on  Government 
(1176)  chiefly  to  refute  Blackstone,  which  he  did  effectively  and  in 
some  detail.  Commenting  upon  one  passage,  he  writes  with  gusto: 

...  on  a  distant  glance  nothing  can  look  fairer.  .  .  .  Step  close  to  it  and 
the  delusion  vanishes.  It  is  then  seen  to  consist  partly  of  self-evident 
observations,  and  partly  of  contradictions;  partly  of  what  every  one 
knows  already,  and  partly  of  what  no  one  can  understand  at  all.  .  .  .^ 

Himself  a  barrister,  he  thought  poorly  of  lawyers  as  a  class, 
describing  them  as: 

...  a  passive  and  enervate  race,  ready  to  swallow  anything,  and  to 
acquiesce  in  anything;  with  intellects  incapable  of  distinguishing  right 
from  wrong,  and  with  affections  alike  indiflFerent  to  either;  insensible, 
short-sighted,  obstinate;  lethargic,  yet  liable  to  be  driven  in  con- 
vulsions by  false  terrors;  deaf  to  the  voice  of  reason  and  public  utility; 
obsequious  only  to  the  whisper  of  interest,  and  to  the  beck  of  power.^ 

Enough  has  been  quoted  to  show  that  Bentham's  works  are  well 
worth  reading.  He  had,  for  one  thing,  a  literary  gift  which  was  denied 
to  many  of  his  disciples.  Using  that  gift,  he  made  himself  the  prophet 
of  militant  atheism,  the  intellectual  leader  of  middle-class  revolt 
against  aristocracy  and  the  inspirer  of  most  Victorian  radical  ideas. 
He  was  himself,  of  course,  an  eighteenth  century  figure,  friend  of  the 
aristocrats  he  meant  to  depose  and  a  frequenter  at  one  time  of  the 
country  houses  he  meant,  presumably,  to  demolish.  As  a  rich 
attorney's  son  he  found  no  door  closed  against  him;  he  had,  there- 
fore, none  of  the  rebel's  bitterness  except  perhaps  where  lawyers 
were  concerned.  The  middle-class  revolt  of  his  day  had  two  main 
aspects;  the  drive  against  all  trade  restraints  and  legalised  monopolies, 
and  the  drive  for  political,  parliamentary  and  municipal  reform.  The 
former  movement  more  especially  concerned  the  East  India  Company, 
the  Corn  Laws,  the  Church  of  England  and  all  that  remained  of  the 
Stuart  attempts  at  State  control  and  social  legislation.  A  drive 
against  all  these  evils  (which  have  mostly  now  been  re-introduced) 
might  have  been  begun  in  the  spirit  of  Rousseau  or  Tom  Paine. 

'  A  Fragment  on  Government.  Jeremy  Bentham.  Ed.  by  F.  C.  Montague.  Oxford,  1931. 
p.  152. 

^  Bentham.  op.  cit.  p.  104. 


DEMOCRACY     JUSTIFIED     BY     UTILITY  211 

But  Bentham — with  some  help  from  Priestley — carefully  discarded 
all  ideas  based  upon  religion,  ethics,  tradition,  history  or  precedent. 
He  was  not  interested  in  Social  Contracts.  Taking  mankind  as  he 
believed  it  to  be,  he  put  forward,  as  his  measure  of  political  excel- 
lence, the  principle  of 'the  greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest  number'.^ 

This  is  how  Bentham  defines  his  own  theory: — 

The  aim  of  government  should  be  the  greatest  happiness  of  all  the 
members  of  the  state.  But  what  is  good  for  one  may  be  opposed  to  the 
happiness  of  many  others.  Unfortunately,  it  is  impossible  to  enlarge 
indefinitely  the  sphere  of  happiness  of  every  individual  without  coming 
in  conflict  with  the  happiness  of  others.  Therefore,  the  only  aim  should 
be  the  greatest  possible  happiness  of  the  greatest  number;  in  a  word, 
the  common  good  is  the  right  aim  of  government,  and  the  proper  task 
of  a  lawmaker  is  to  discover  regulations  designed  to  bring  about  the 
greatest  good  to  the  greatest  number  of  human  beings.  The  just  law- 
maker who  has  equal  regard  for  every  member  of  the  community  can 
pursue  no  other  aim.  The  determination  of  every  point  in  every  law, 
from  first  to  last,  without  exception,  must  be  directed  toward  the 
greatest  good  of  the  greatest  number  and  must  rest  upon  that  principle. 
Was  this  ever  the  case?" 

He  answers  'No'  and  explains  that  government  has  always  been 
for  the  benefit  of  those  who  did  the  governing. 

The  critic  of  Bentham's  theory,  as  it  is  thus  briefly  explained,  would 
object  that  'happiness'  is  too  vague  a  term.  But  Bentham  does  not 
leave  the  word  undefined.  Analysing  it,  he  finds  in  it  the  elements  of 
Subsistence.  Abundance,  Security  and  Equality.  This  last  element  he 
expressly  denies  as  a  fact  but  insists  upon  as  a  working  rule  of 
legislation — very  much  in  the  tradition  of  English  law.  Applying  his 
main  principle  to  the  question  of  the  inequality  of  worldly  means,  he 
points  out  that  in  the  increase  of  wealth  there  is  a  law  of  diminishing 
returns.  A  hundred  pounds  or  an  acre  of  land  is  nothing  to  a  mil- 
lionaire, little  to  a  man  of  wealth,  something  to  a  tradesman  and  a 
fortune  to  a  labourer.  It  shall  be  given,  therefore,  to  the  man  to  whom 
it  will  give  greatest  happiness;  for  so  only  will  the  sum  total  of 
happiness  be  perceptibly  increased.  As  a  result  of  this  reasoning, 
Bentham  pleads  for  a  wider  distribution  of  property. 

The  greatest  sum  of  total  happiness  is  to  be  obtained  through  the 
most  equal  distribution  of  goods.  The  state  should  thus  strive  towards 
a  continual  approach  to  equality  of  possession,  but  without  impairing 
its  three  other  aims  which  are  above  equality,  namely,  security,  sub- 
sistence, well-being.  Equality  is,  in  fact,  the  equality  of  these  three. 
For  the  attainment  of  equality,  therefore,  no  measures  should  be 

'  See  Political  Philosophy  from  Plato  to  Jeremy  Bentham.  G.  Engeimann.  Trans,  by 
K.  F.  Geiser.  New  York,  1927. 

''  Engeimann.  op.  cit.  Introduction  to  a  project  for  a  Constitutional  Code.  p.  340. 


212  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

applied  which  undermine  security,  disturb  existence  and  well-being, 
or  weaken  the  initiative  and  activity  of  the  individual.  The  proper 
measure  is  the  control  of  the  right  of  inheritance.^ 

While  thus  seeking  to  bring  about  a  greater  degree  of  economic 
equality,  Bentham  was  not  a  socialist.  He  considered,  in  fact,  that 
'the  hostile  sword  in  its  utmost  furies'  would  be  a  less  dreadful 
prospect  than  the  victory  of  socialism.  But  while  not  a  socialist,  he 
was  a  democrat.  He  wanted  to  sweep  away  monarchy  and  peerage 
and  leave  all  power  to  a  reformed  House  of  Commons,  itself  checked 
by  an  enlightened  middle  class.  'An  economical  financial  adminis- 
tration', he  held,  'is  only  possible  in  a  representative  democracy'. 
He  finds  a  further  merit  in  such  a  regime  in  that  'a  representative 
democracy — in  which  the  supreme  power  is  in  the  people  who  elect 
and  reject  them — will  scarcely  engage  in  war'.  He  strongly  supported 
the  liberty  of  the  press  as  a  safeguard  against  oppression.  He  thought 
he  could  have  no  better  object  in  life  than  'the  bettering  of  this  wicked 
world,  by  covering  it  over  with  Republics'. 

Bentham  believed  in  unlimited  freedom  of  competition,  arguing 
that  all  restrictions  reduce  the  national  wealth.  Only  free  competition 
will  secure  the  lowest  prices  and  the  best  work.  He  was  opposed  to 
the  acquisition  of  colonies,  maintaining  that  one  could  trade  with 
them  without  controlling  them.  Colonies  were  to  him,  in  fact,  yet 
one  more  instance  of  'the  fallacy  of  those  artificial  efforts  which 
legislation  makes  to  increase  the  country's  wealth'.  Curiously,  his 
whole  argument  about  the  greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest  number 
assumes  an  equality  of  persons,  and  an  equality  moreover  in  their 
capacity  for  happiness — a  doubtful  point — and  even  in  their  method 
of  achieving  it.  Such  a  belief  might  have  been  justified  in  terms  of 
Natural  Law  but  Bentham  believed  in  no  such  thing.  Indeed,  the 
idea  of  natural  law  or  natural  right  had  been  effectively  demolished  by 
David  Hume  as  far  back  as  1 748,  and  demolished  indeed  to  Bentham's 
own  satisfaction.  Hume  had  shown  convincingly  that  the  nature  of 
human  loyalty  and  the  nature  of  a  contract  are  entirely  different, 
although  both  derive  from  a  desire  for  a  stable  society.  He  had 
shown,  furthermore,  that  ideas  of  morality  (including  the  idea  that  a 
contract  should  be  kept)  are  not  'eternal  verities  rooted  in  nature,  but 
merely  standard  ways  of  behaving  justified  by  experience  .  .  .  fixed 
by  habit'.'"  Some  of  these  conventions  concern  property,  others 
concern  government. 

If  the  premises  of  Hume's  argument  be  granted,  it  can  hardly  be 
denied  that  he  made  a  clean  sweep  of  the  whole  rationalist  philosophy 
of  natural  right,  of  self-evident  truths,  and  of  the  laws  of  eternal  and 

'  A  History  of  Political  Theory.  George  H.  Sabine.  London,  1937.  p.  508. 
'  Jeremy  Bentham,  op.  cit.  p.  153. 


DEMOCRACY     JUSTIFIED     BY     UTILITY  213 

immutable  morality  which  were  supposed  to  guarantee  the  harmony 
of  nature  and  the  order  of  human  society.  In  place  of  indefeasible 
rights  or  natural  justice  and  liberty,  there  remains  merely  utility,  con- 
ceived in  terms  either  of  self-interest  or  social  stability,  and  issuing  in 
certain  conventional  standards  of  conduct  which  on  the  whole  serve 
human  purposes.  Such  conventions  may,  of  course,  be  widespread 
among  men  and  relatively  permanent,  because  human  motives  are 
fairly  uniform  and  in  their  general  outlines  change  slowly,  but  in  no 
other  sense  can  they  be  called  universal.' 

Hume  himself  ends  his  essay  On  the  Original  Contract  with  the 
words: 

New  discoveries  are  not  to  be  expected  in  these  matters.  If  scarce 
any  man,  till  very  lately,  ever  imagined  that  government  was  founded 
on  compact,  it  is  certain  that  it  cannot,  in  general,  have  any  such 
foundation.- 

This  was  an  argument  which  Bentham  accepted  if  others  did  not. 
He  would  base  his  government  neither  on  a  fictitious  'contract'  nor 
on  the  laws  of  god  nor  on  the  laws  of  morality  which  men  may  have 
evolved  for  themselves. 

Nature  has  placed  mankind  under  the  governance  of  two  sovereign 
masters,  pain  and  pleasure.  It  is  for  them  alone  to  point  out  what  we 
ought  to  do,  as  well  as  to  determine  what  we  shall  do.  ...  In  words  a 
man  may  pretend  to  abjure  their  empire:  but  in  reality  he  will  remain 
subject  to  it  all  the  while.  .  .  .•' 

Bentham's  whole  argument  in  support  of  'laissez-faire'  is  thus 
based  on  the  assumption  that  human  motives  are  selfish  and  that  their 
selfishness  can  be  turned  to  good  account.  But  Bentham's  own  ex- 
ample— the  example  of  a  long  life  entirely  spent  in  a  selfless  search 
for  truth  and  the  means  of  bettering  mankind — contradicts  all  his 
own  assumptions  as  to  what  human  motives  can  be  taken  to  be.  If 
that  life  was  'happiness'  to  him  (as  it  clearly  was),  his  'greatest  happi- 
ness of  the  greatest  number'  must  be  given  a  meaning  very  different 
from  the  obvious  meaning  and  very  different  from  the  sense  in  which 
he  used  the  phrase  himself. 

Bentham's  influence,  considerable  in  his  own  day,  became  almost 
supreme  in  nineteenth  century  England  after  his  death.  His  friends 
and  followers  were  the  Utilitarians — Ricardo  the  economist, 
Malthus  the  writer  on  population  and  James  Mill,  the  historian  of 
British  India.  Mill  and  Bentham  agreed  to  educate  the  former's  child 
to  be  the  apostle  of  their  teaching.  Their  plan  was  queerly  successful, 

'  Sabine,  G.  H.  op.  cii.  p.  509. 

-  Social  Contract.  Essays  by  Locke,  Hume  and  Rousseau,  with  an  introduction  by  Sir 
Ernest  Barker.  Oxford,  1948. 

'  Jeremy  Bentham.  op.  cit.  (Chapter  I  of  Introduction). 


214  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

dreadful  as  the  results  were,  physically,  for  John  Stuart  Mill.  Be- 
ginning to  read  at  the  age  of  two,  he  had  reached  the  differential 
calculus  at  the  age  of  eight,  completed  his  formal  education  by  the 
age  of  fourteen  and  had  a  nervous  breakdown  when  he  was  twenty. 
He  went  on  to  become  an  influential  writer,  dominating  English 
economic  and  political  thought  from  about  1843  to  about  1874.  He 
was  the  prophet  of  the  middle-class  revolution,  a  Member  of  Parlia- 
ment for  three  years  and  in  Parliament  indeed  for  the  passing  of  the 
Reform  Bill  of  1867.  His  best-known  work,  perhaps,  was  his  essay 
On  Liberty  of  1859.  He  died  in  1873,  leaving  as  his  chief  legacy  a  body 
of  doctrine  concerning  'free  competition,  free  trade,  freedom  of 
opinion,  of  speech,  of  writing  and  of  action'.^ 

In  comparing  John  Stuart  Mill  with  Bentham  we  must  remember 
that  they  lived  in  different  periods.  Mill  was  not  only  heir  to  the 
Utilitarian  philosophy;  he  was  also  a  witness  of  its  immediate 
results.  He  watched  the  slowprocessby  which  (with  successive  exten- 
sions of  the  franchise)  the  voting  power  in  England  passed  from  the 
upper  to  the  lower  middle  class  and  so  to  the  working  class  itself. 
There  is  no  need  to  enter  here  into  a  detailed  description  of  how  this 
came  about.  The  story  has  been  told  repeatedly  and  is  exceptional 
only  in  that  the  English  aristocracy  was  remarkably  adroit  in  avoid- 
ing revolution.  And  yet  it  may  be  that  there  is  occasion  to  remark  on 
one  or  two  stages  of  the  process  which  are  not  always  sufficiently 
emphasised.  The  aristocracy,  firmly  entrenched  under  the  first  two 
Hanoverian  kings  and  justified  by  the  success  of  the  Seven  Years 
War,  had  to  meet,  after  1763,  George  Ill's  attempt  to  restore  the 
royal  power.  In  defeating  that  attempt  (in  America,  deliberately)  the 
great  families  reached  the  height  of  their  power.  Thenceforward  their 
influence  declined  and  the  younger  Pitt,  taught  by  Lord  Shelburne, 
did  his  best  to  hasten  the  process.  He  called  in  the  middle-class  to 
his  aid.  Failing  in  his  attempt  at  parliamentary  reform  he  tried  to 
gain  his  purpose  by  other  means. 

...  He  created  a  plebeian  aristocracy  and  blended  it  with  the  patrician 
oligarchy.  He  made  peers  of  second-rate  squires  and  fat  graziers.  He 
caught  them  in  the  alleys  of  Lombard  Street,  and  clutched  them  from 
the  counting-houses  of  Cornhill.  When  Mr.  Pitt,  in  an  age  of  Bank 
restriction,  declared  that  every  man  with  an  estate  of  ten  thousand  a 
year  had  a  right  to  be  a  peer,  he  sounded  the  knell  of  'the  cause  for 
which  Hampden  had  died  on  the  field,  and  Sydney  on  the  scaffold'. - 

According  to  Disraeli,  Lord  Shelburne  'was  the  first  great  minister 
who  comprehended  the  rising  importance  of  the  middle  class'.  That 
is  why  Jeremy  Bentham  was  invited  to  Bowood.  His  views  accorded 

'  The  Social  and  Political  Ideas  of  some  Representative  Thinkers  of  the  Age  of  Reaction 
and  Reconstruction,  1815-65.  Ed.  by  F.  J.  C.  Hearnshaw.  London,  1932.  p.  132. 
-  Sybil,  or  the  Two  Nations.  Benjamin  Disraeli.  London,  1954.  p.  29. 


DEMOCRACY    JUSTIFIED     BY    UTILITY  215 

with  those  of  Shelburne  and  Pitt,  and  Utilitarianism  essentially 
represents  their  policy,  more  especially  on  the  economic  side. 
Bentham  was  no  tool  of  the  politicians  but  he  had  been  in  close 
touch  with  one  of  the  ablest  statesmen  of  the  day.  He  was  going  with, 
not  against,  the  tide. 

If  comparisons  suggest  themselves  between  the  history  of  ancient 
Rome  and  of  modern  Britain,  the  points  of  resemblance  are  not 
coincidental.  They  passed  through  similar  phases  of  growth  and 
decay.  But,  apart  from  that,  the  English  aristocracy  had  been 
educated  in  the  classics.  People  like  Shelburne  and  Pitt — people,  for 
that  matter,  like  Bentham — knew  all  about  Marius,  the  Gracchi, 
Livius  Drusus  and  Sulla.  They  knew  more  about  them  than  they  did 
about  King  John  or  Queen  Elizabeth.  The  result  was  that  they  with- 
drew almost  instinctively  from  untenable  positions.  They  gave  way, 
moreover,  gracefully.  The  technique,  however,  in  which  they  special- 
ised was  that  of  retaining  a  ministry  in  office  on  the  understanding 
that  they  would  adopt  the  measures  of  the  opposition.  Looking  back, 
it  is  difficult  to  recall  which  liberal  measures  were  introduced  by 
Whigs  and  which  by  Tories.  More  recently,  it  is  as  difficult  to 
remember,  of  sociahst  legislation,  which  Act  is  attributable  to  which 
party.  Ministers  do  what  they  realise  will  have  to  be  done.  The 
transfer  of  power,  therefore,  from  the  classes  to  the  masses  has  been 
in  one  sense  faster,  in  another  sense  slower,  than  is  often  perceived. 
The  measures  have  changed  more  readily  than  the  men.  The  transition 
from  aristocracy  to  democracy  was  slow  as  represented  by  the 
composition  of  Parliament  and  Cabinet.  And  while  the  types  of 
Prime  Minister  in  office  admittedly  passed  through  the  gradations 
from  Lord  Melbourne  to  Asquith,  it  was  not  until  the  appoint- 
ment of  Lloyd  George  in  1916  that  Britain  saw  a  Prime  Minister 
who  was  not,  by  any  contemporary  standard,  a  gentleman.^ 

John  Stuart  Mill  thus  witnessed  in  his  lifetime  a  great  deal  of  what 
Bentham  foresaw.  Nor  was  Britain  his  only  example  of  a  growing 
democracy.  Italy  and  Switzerland  had  modern  constitutions  from 
1848.  The  United  States  became  more  democratic  in  character  after 
the  Civil  War  which  ended  in  1865.  The  constitution  of  Austria- 
Hungary,  adopted  in  1867,  provided  in  Austria  a  House  of  Rep- 
resentatives, to  which  the  members  were  directly  elected  from  1873. 
There  was  even  a  Liberal  ministry  in  office  from  1871  to  1879.  The 

'  Of  35  previous  Prime  Ministers,  27  had  been  the  sons  of  landowners.  The  younger 
Pitt  and  Perceval  had  been  barristers  but  were  well  connected.  Addington  was  the  first 
of  middle-class  origin,  being  son  of  a  physician.  Canning  was  son  of  a  barrister.  Peel 
of  a  cotton  manufacturer,  Gladstone  of  a  shipowner.  Disraeli,  the  novelist,  was  an 
exception  but  practically  all  Prime  Ministers  down  to  and  including  Gladstone  were 
men  of  wealth  or  family.  Campbeil-Bannerman  (1905)  broke  precedent  in  having 
actually  been  in  business  as  a  wholesale  draper,  but  even  he  was  a  Cambridge  man. 
H.  H.  Asquith,  barrister  and  son  of  a  woollen  manufacturer,  had  been  educated  at 
Balliol.  Lloyd  George  started  life  without  any  advantage  of  any  kind. 


216  THE    EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

German  Empire  was  brought  into  existence  in  1871,  the  constitution 
providing  for  a  Reichstag,  elected  on  a  system  of  practically  universal 
suffrage.  France  became  a  Republic  again  in  1875  with  a  democratic 
constitution,  a  President,  a  Senate  and  a  Chamber  of  Deputies. 
Switzerland  had  a  constitutional  revision  in  1874  which  strengthened 
the  position  of  the  Federal  as  opposed  to  the  Canton  institutions  but 
also  provided  for  a  direct  appeal  to  the  people  by  referendum.  Brazil 
became  a  Republic  in  1889  and  even  Spain  introduced  universal 
suffrage  in  1890.  It  is  true  that  the  powers  of  these  elected  assemblies 
varied  considerably,  those  of  the  Reichstag  for  example,  being  mainly 
advisory,  and  those  of  the  Austrian  Reichsrath  vested  as  much  in  the 
Herrenhaus  as  in  the  House  of  Representatives.  Nevertheless  there 
were  few  countries  so  behind  the  times  as  to  refrain  from  going 
through  the  motions  of  democracy.  Alexander  II  was  about  to 
introduce  a  measure  of  democracy  in  Russia  when  he  was  assas- 
sinated in  1881.  It  is  not  too  great  a  generalisation  to  say  that  rep- 
resentative democracy  was  the  fashion  in  the  last  quarter  of  the 
nineteenth  century.^ 

To  a  conservatively-minded  thinker,  which  John  Stuart  Mill  was 
not,  the  course  of  this  democratic  flood  was  a  matter  for  alarm.  It  is 
interesting  to  see  how  the  process  was  viewed,  for  example,  by 
Joseph  Conrad,  in  1885. 

.  .  .  every  disreputable  ragamuffin  in  Europe  feels  that  the  day  of 
universal  brotherhood,  dispoliation  and  disorder  is  coming  apace, 
and  nurses  day-dreams  of  well-plenished  pockets  amongst  the  ruin  of 
all  that  is  respectable,  venerable  and  holy.  The  great  British  Empire 
went  over  the  edge,  and  yet  on  to  the  inclined  plane  of  social  progress 
and  radical  reform.  The  downward  movement  is  hardly  perceptible 
yet,  and  the  clever  men  who  started  it  may  flatter  themselves  with  the 
progress;  but  they  will  soon  find  that  the  fate  of  the  nation  is  out  of 
their  hands  now!  The  Alpine  avalanche  rolls  quicker  and  quicker  as  it 
nears  the  abyss — its  ultimate  destination!  Where's  the  man  to  stop 
the  crashing  avalanche? 

Where's  the  man  to  stop  the  rush  of  social-democratic  ideas  ?  The 
opportunity  and  the  day  have  come  and  are  gone!  Believe  me:  gone 
forever!  For  the  sun  is  set  and  the  last  barrier  removed.  England  was 
the  only  barrier  to  the  pressure  of  infernal  doctrines  born  in  continental 
back-slums.  Now,  there  is  nothing!  The  destiny  of  the  nation  and  of  all 
nations  is  to  be  accomplished  in  darkness  amidst  much  weeping  and 
gnashing  of  teeth,  to  pass  through  robbery,  equality,  anarchy  and 
misery  under  the  iron  rule  of  a  military  despotism!  Such  is  the  lesson 
of  common  sense  logic. 

Socialism  must  inevitably  end  in  Caesarism.^ 

'  See  Governments  and  Parties  in  Continental  Europe.  A.  Lawrence  Lowell.  London, 
1896.  (2  Vols.)  See  also  A  Short  History  of  Democracy.  A.  F.  Hattersley.  Cambridge, 
1930. 

'Joseph  Conrad,  Life  and  Letters.  G.  Jean  Aubry.  London,  1927.  2  vols.  Vol.  I.  p.  84. 


DEMOCRACY    JUSTIFIED     BY     UTILITY  217 

Prophetic  as  this  passage  may  seem,  events  were  to  move  more 
slowly  than  Conrad  anticipated.  The  working  class  did  not  gain 
control  of  England  until  the  period  1910-21,  nor  were  the  results  of 
that  control  immediately  experienced.  But  there  was  cause  for 
anxiety,  and  one  man  who  shared  that  anxiety  was  John  Stuart  Mill. 

Mill's  anxiety  was  lest  Bentham's  democracy  and  Bentham's 
freedom  might  be  found  incompatible  with  each  other.  While  govern- 
ment was  vested  in  King  or  Peerage  there  might  be  considerable 
support  for  any  proposals  made  to  limit  the  power  of  government; 
especially  its  powers  of  interference  in  trade,  in  conduct,  in  morals 
and  opinion.  But  the  tendency  of  the  nineteenth  century  was  to  secure 
for  the  people  the  control  of  the  government  itself. 

By  degrees  this  new  demand  for  elective  and  temporary  rulers  be- 
came the  prominent  object  of  the  exertions  of  the  popular  party, 
wherever  any  such  party  existed;  and  superseded,  to  a  considerable 
extent  the  previous  efforts  to  limit  the  power  of  rulers.  As  the  struggle 
proceeded  for  making  the  ruling  power  emanate  from  the  periodical 
choice  of  the  ruled,  some  persons  began  to  think  that  too  much  im- 
portance had  been  attached  to  the  limitation  of  the  power  itself.  That 
(it  might  seem)  was  a  resource  against  rulers  whose  interests  were 
habitually  opposed  to  those  of  the  people.  What  was  now  wanted  was 
that  the  rulers  should  be  identified  with  the  people;  that  their 
interest  and  will  should  be  the  interest  and  will  of  the  nation.  The 
nation  did  not  need  to  be  protected  against  its  own  will.  There  was 
no  fear  of  its  tyrannizing  over  itself.  .  .  . 

But,  in  political  and  philosophical  theories,  as  well  as  in  persons, 
success  discloses  faults  and  infirmities  which  failure  might  have 
concealed.  .  .  } 

Mill  perceives,  in  fact,  that  a  democratic  government  may  persecute 
a  minority  and  abolish  freedom  in  a  way  that  a  king  neither  can  nor 
dare.  So  he  makes  his  plea  for  liberty  as  against  the  tendency  of 
the  age. 

Apart  from  the  peculiar  tenets  of  individual  thinkers,  there  is  also  in 
the  world  at  large  an  increasing  inclination  to  stretch  unduly  the  powers 
of  society  over  the  individual,  both  by  the  force  of  opinion  and  even  by 
legislation:  and  as  the  tendency  of  all  the  changes  taking  place  in  the 
world  is  to  strengthen  society,  and  diminish  the  power  of  the  indi- 
vidual, this  encroachment  is  not  one  of  the  evils  which  tend  spon- 
taneously to  disappear,  but,  on  the  contrary,  to  grow  more  and  more 
formidable.  The  disposition  of  mankind,  whether  as  rulers  or  as  fellow 
citizens,  to  impose  their  own  opinions  and  inclinations  as  a  rule  of 
conduct  on  others,  is  so  energetically  supported  by  some  of  the  best 
and  by  some  of  the  worst  feelings  incident  to  human  nature,  that  it  is 
hardly  ever  kept  under  restraint  by  anything  but  want  of  power;  and 

'  On  Liberty.  Representative  Government.  The  Subjection  of  Women.  Three  essays  by 
John  Stuart  Mill. 


218  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

as  the  power  is  not  declining,  but  growing,  unless  a  strong  barrier  of 
moral  conviction  can  be  raised  against  the  mischief,  we  must  expect, 
in  the  present  circumstances  of  the  world,  to  see  it  increase.^ 

Mill  then  makes  his  plea  for  liberty  as  against  the  tendency  of  the 
day.  He  rather  assumes  than  proves  his  initial  position,  that: 

If  all  mankind  minus  one,  were  of  one  opinion,  and  only  one  person 
were  of  the  contrary  opinion,  mankind  would  be  no  more  justified  in 
silencing  that  one  person,  than  he,  if  he  had  the  power,  would  be 
justified  in  silencing  mankind. 

This  view  Mill  goes  on  to  illustrate  with  historical  examples,  such 
as  those  of  Socrates  and  Christ,  to  show  that  the  one  may  be  right 
and  mankind  wrong.  But,  he  argues,  even  if  we  suppose  mankind 
to  be  right,  the  orthodox  cannot  even  understand  their  orthodoxy 
until  they  have  heard — if  only  to  refute — the  arguments  against  it. 
Beliefs  accepted,  he  maintains,  and  never  argued  have  little  influence 
upon  conduct.  Apart  frorh  that,  the  likelihood  is  that  the  truth  lies 
halfway  between  the  orthodox  and  the  heretic.  Popular  opinions  are 
seldom  the  whole  truth,  and  it  is  only  by  dispute  that  the  truth  can 
be  ascertained.  As  for  those  who  admit  the  need  for  free  discussion 
but  not  'pushed  to  an  extreme',  they  fail  to  realise  that  unless  the 
reasons  justifying  free  discussion  hold  good  in  an  extreme  case  they 
do  not  hold  good  at  all.^ 

In  Chapter  3  Mill  complains  again  of  the  danger  to  the  individual: 

.  .  .  society  has  now  fairly  got  the  better  of  individuality;  and  the 
danger  which  threatens  human  nature  is  not  the  excess,  but  the 
deficiency  of  personal  impulses  and  preferences.  Things  are  vastly 
changed,  since  the  passions  of  those  who  were  strong  by  station  or  by 
personal  endowment  were  in  a  state  of  habitual  rebellion  against  laws 
and  ordinances.  ...  In  our  times,  from  the  highest  class  of  society  down 
to  the  lowest,  every  one  lives  as  under  the  eye  of  a  hostile  and  dreaded 
censorship.  ...  I  do  not  mean  that  they  choose  what  is  customary,  in 
preference  to  what  suits  their  own  inclination.  It  does  not  occur  to 
them  to  have  any  inclination,  except  for  what  is  customary  ...  by  dint 
of  not  following  their  own  nature,  they  have  no  nature  to  follow.  .  .  .^ 

He  sees  in  this  a  sort  of  Calvinism  by  which  everything  not  a  duty  is 
a  sin.  He  pleads  that  originality  is  valuable  and  that  people  of  original 
minds  need  freedom — 'these  few  are  the  salt  of  the  earth;  without 
them,  human  life  would  become  a  stagnant  pool'.  Unfortunately, 
'Originality  is  the  one  thing  which  unoriginal  minds  cannot  feel  the 
use  of  and  'the  general  tendency  of  things  throughout  the  world  is 
to  render  mediocrity  the  ascendant  power  among  mankind'. 

'  Mill.  op.  cit.  p.  20. 
"-  Ibid.  p.  29. 
=  Ibid.  p.  69. 


DEMOCRACY     JUSTIFIED     BY     UTILITY  219 

No  government  by  a  democracy  or  a  numerous  aristocracy,  either 
in  its  political  acts  or  in  the  opinions,  qualities  and  tone  of  mind  which 
it  fosters,  ever  did  or  ever  could  rise  above  mediocrity,  except  in  so 
far  as  the  sovereign.  Many  have  let  themselves  be  guided  (which  in 
their  best  times  they  have  always  done)  by  the  counsels  and  influence 
of  a  more  highly  gifted  and  instructed  One  or  Few.  The  initiation  of  all 
wise  or  noble  things,  comes  and  must  come  from  individuals.  .  .  .^ 

Such  individuals  are  resisted  by  the  lovers  of  what  is  customary. 
Mill  then  asserts  that  it  is  custom  which  rules  the  East  and  that  it  has 
killed  progress  there  in  killing  originality. 

We  have  a  warning  example  in  China — a  nation  of  much  talent,  and, 
in  some  respects,  even  wisdom,  owing  to  the  rare  good  fortune  of 
having  been  provided  at  an  early  period  with  a  particularly  good  set  of 
customs,  the  work,  in  some  measure,  of  men  to  whom  even  the  most 
enlightened  European  must  accord,  under  certain  limitations,  the 
title  of  sages  and  philosophers.  They  are  remarkable,  too,  in  the 
excellence  of  their  apparatus  for  impressing,  as  far  as  possible,  the 
best  wisdom  they  possess  upon  every  mind  in  the  community,  and 
securing  that  those  who  have  appropriated  most  of  it  shall  occupy  the 
posts  of  honour  and  power.  .  .  .  They  have  succeeded  beyond  all  hope 
in  what  English  philanthropists  are  so  industriously  working  at — in 
making  a  people  all  alike,  all  governing  their  thoughts  and  conduct  by 
the  same  maxims  and  rules;  and  these  are  the  fruits. - 

By  the  fruits  Mill  means  stagnation.  Europe,  he  thinks,  has  avoided 
this  stagnation  through  the  European  diversity  of  character  and 
culture.  But  this  diversity,  in  England,  is  rapidly  diminishing  as 
political  changes  'tend  to  raise  the  low  and  to  lower  the  high' — both 
in  station  and  education.  Improved  communications  and  trade  have 
the  same  effect. 

The  demand  that  all  other  people  shall  resemble  ourselves,  grows  by 
what  it  feeds  on.  If  resistance  waits  till  life  is  reduced  nearly  to  one 
uniform  type,  all  deviations  from  that  type  will  come  to  be  considered 
impious,  immoral,  even  monstrous  and  contrary  to  nature.  Mankind 
speedily  become  unable  to  conceive  diversity,  when  they  have  been 
for  some  time  unaccustomed  to  see  it.^ 

So  Mill  goes  on  to  discuss  what  limits  there  should  be  to  the 
authority,  not  merely  of  the  State  but  of  society,  over  the  individual. 
He  has  no  difficulty  in  showing  that  the  State  and  society  have  no 
right  to  interfere  in  matters  which  concern  only  the  individual.  He 
gives  instances  of  laws  based  on  religion  rather  than  upon  public 
utility;  and  had  he  lived  longer  could  have  mentioned  more.  He  gives 
instances  ofliberty  (when  based  on  no  real  principle)  being  excessive, 

'  Mill.  op.  cit.  p.  82. 
'  Ibid.  p.  88. 
Ubid.  p.  91. 


220  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

as  in  the  parent's  right  to  educate  or  neglect  his  child.  He  is  opposed, 
on  the  other  hand,  to  the  nationalisation  of  schools,  for  'a  general 
State  education  is  a  mere  contrivance  for  moulding  people  to  be 
exactly  like  one  another'.  It  also  'establishes  a  despotism  over  the 
mind'.  The  most  he  will  approve  in  this  direction  is  a  public  exam- 
ination, to  ensure  that  parents  do  their  duty.  Not  that  he  leaves 
unquestioned  the  right  of  people  to  become  parents  at  all,  for  in  an 
over-populated  country  'to  produce  children,  beyond  a  very  small 
number  ...  is  a  serious  offence'.  His  argument,  in  short,  is  that 
questions  of  authority  and  reasonable  interference  should  be  divorced 
from  religion  and  prejudice  and  solved  on  the  general  principle  of 
utility. 

The  principle  of  utility  certainly  allows  Mill  to  tread  a  narrow 
path  between  tyranny  and  licence.  He  sees  dangers  on  either  side  but 
is  more  impressed  by  the  perils  of  interference  than  the  perils  of 
neglect.  Even  when  it  does  not  infringe  on  liberty,  government  inter- 
vention is  open,  he  considers,  to  three  general  objections.^  To  begin 
with,  the  individual  normally  knows  his  own  business  best.  Even 
if  he  does  not,  his  freedom  to  choose  is  a  means  of  education  and 
development.  Finally  the  effect  of  state  guidance  is  to  dwarf  the 
individual;  and  it  is  of  individuals  that  society  is  composed.  He 
describes  in  memorable  words  the  situation  which  would  result  from 
over-centralisation. 

If  the  roads,  the  railways,  the  banks,  the  insurance  offices,  the  great 
joint-stock  companies,  the  universities,  and  the  public  charities,  were 
all  of  them  branches  of  the  government;  if,  in  addition,  the  municipal 
corporations  and  local  boards,  with  all  that  now  devolves  on  them, 
became  departments  of  the  central  administration;  if  the  employees  of 
all  these  different  enterprises  were  appointed  and  paid  by  the  govern- 
ment, and  looked  to  the  government  for  every  rise  in  life;  not  all  the 
freedom  of  the  press  and  popular  constitution  of  the  legislature 
would  make  this  or  any  other  country  free  otherwise  than  in  name. 
And  the  evil  would  be  greater,  the  more  efficiently  and  scientifically 
the  administrative  machinery  was  constructed — the  more  skilful  the 
arrangements  for  obtaining  the  best  qualified  hands  and  heads  with 
which  to  work  it.  In  England  it  has  of  late  been  proposed  that  all  the 
members  of  the  civil  service  of  government  should  be  selected  by 
competitive  examination,  to  obtain  for  those  employments  the  most 
intelligent  and  instructed  persons  procurable.  .  .  .  [He  supposes,  for  the 
sake  of  argument,  that  the  State  should,  by  this  device,  secure  the 
service  of  all  the  ablest  men].  .  .  .  If  every  part  of  the  business  of  society 
which  required  organised  concert,  or  large  and  comprehensive  views, 
were  in  the  hands  of  government,  and  if  government  offices  were 
universally  filled  by  the  ablest  men,  all  the  enlarged  culture  and 

'  Mill.  op.  cit.  p.  133. 


DEMOCRACY    JUSTIFIED     BY     UTILITY  221 

practised  intelligence  in  the  country,  except  the  purely  speculative, 
would  be  concentrated  in  a  numerous  bureaucracy,  to  whom  alone  the 
rest  of  the  community  would  look  for  all  things:  the  multitude  for 
direction  and  dictation  in  all  they  had  to  do;  the  able  and  aspiring  for 
personal  advancement.  To  be  admitted  into  the  ranks  of  this  bureau- 
cracy, and  when  admitted,  to  rise  therein,  would  be  the  sole  object  of 
ambition.  .  .  .  Such  is  the  melancholy  condition  of  the  Russian  empire, 
as  shown  in  the  accounts  of  those  who  have  had  sufficient  opportunity 
of  observation.^ 

Such  is  still  the  melancholy  condition  of  the  Russian  Empire,  as 
shown  in  the  accounts  of  those  who  have  had  sufficient  opportunity 
of  observation.  Such  is  also  the  melancholy  condition,  for  all  prac- 
tical purposes,  of  the  British  Empire.  Our  further  experience  mostly 
goes  towards  proving  the  rule  that  the  most  successful  administration 
produces  the  most  complete  serfdom.  And  Mill  explains  what  the 
further  disadvantages  must  be. 

It  is  not,  also,  to  be  forgotten,  that  the  absorption  of  all  the  principal 
ability  of  the  country  into  the  governing  body  is  fatal,  sooner  or  later, 
to  the  mental  activity  and  progressiveness  of  the  body  itself.  Banded 
together  as  they  are — working  a  system  which,  like  all  systems, 
necessarily  proceeds  in  a  great  measure  by  fixed  rules — the  officials  are 
under  the  constant  temptation  of  sinking  into  indolent  routine,  or,  if 
they  now  and  then  desert  that  mill-horse  round,  of  rushing  into  some 
half-examined  crudity  which  has  struck  the  fancy  of  some  leading 
member  of  the  corps.  .  .  .'" 

Coming  from  one  who  never  perhaps  heard  ot  groundnuts  and  to 
whom  Crichel  Down  would  have  meant  nothing,  this  last  sentence 
reveals  an  almost  uncanny  accuracy  of  prediction. 

Mill  ends  his  famous  essay  by  attempting  to  fix  the  point  at  which 
'much  of  the  advantages  of  centralised  power  and  intelligence'  can 
be  gained  'without  turning  into  governmental  channels  too  great  a 
proportion  of  the  general  activity'.  The  principle  which  he  advocates 
is:  'the  greatest  dissemination  of  power  consistent  with  efficiency;  but 
the  greatest  possible  centralisation  of  information,  and  diffusion  of  it 
from  the  centre'.  He  realises,  of  course,  the  difficulty  of  judging  the 
point  at  which  decentralisation  becomes  muddle.  He  thinks,  however, 
that  the  mischief  of  over-administration  begins  when  'instead  of 
calling  forth  the  activity  and  powers  of  individuals  and  bodies,  it 
substitutes  its  own  activity  for  theirs'.  He  concludes  finally  that, 

...  a  State  which  dwarfs  its  men,  in  order  that  they  may  be  more 
docile  instruments  in  its  hands,  even  for  beneficial  purposes,  will  find 
that  with  small  men  no  great  thing  can  really  be  accomplished :  and 

'  Mill.  op.  cit.  p.  135. 
'Ibid.  p.  138. 


222  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

that  the  perfection  of  machinery  to  which  it  has  sacrificed  everything, 
will  in  the  end  avail  it  nothing,  for  want  of  the  vital  power  which,  in 
order  that  the  machine  might  work  more  smoothly,  it  has  preferred  to 
banish.^ 

Far  longer  than  his  essay  on  Liberty  is  Mill's  essay  on  Representative 
Government}  He  asks  in  Chapter  II  what  is  the  criterion  of  a  good 
form  of  government.  He  answers  that  government  should  be  judged, 
in  the  first  place,  by  the  degree  in  which  it  tends  to  increase  the  sum  of 
good  qualities  in  the  governed,  taking  these  both  collectively  and 
individually.  It  should  be  judged,  in  the  second  place,  by  the  efficiency 
with  which  it  harnesses  these  qualities  for  public  ends.  Only  a 
'completely  popular  government'  has  this  character.  But  direct 
democracy,  as  he  admits,  is  possible  only  in  a  small  town.  Democracy 
on  a  larger  scale  must  be  representative,  and  representative  govern- 
ment is  therefore  'the  ideal  type  of  the  most  perfect  polity',  although 
not  all  peoples  are  fit  to  have  it  or  able  to  do  their  duties  under  it.  He 
then  goes  on  to  a  detailed  description  of  an  extended  suffrage, 
methods  of  election,  ballot,  duration  of  elected  office,  second 
chambers,  executive,  federations  and  colonies.  Basically,  his  argu- 
ment is  more  convincing  than  all  earlier  reasonings  about  natural 
law,  implied  contracts  and  the  rights  of  man.  Mill  very  properly 
holds  that  government  is  to  be  judged  by  results,  not  by  theories  as 
to  how  it  may  have  originated.  Whether  his  two  criteria  are  the  best 
is  another  matter  and  raises  some  doubt  as  to  what  'good  qualities' 
are.  But,  without  criticising  the  validity  of  his  reasoning,  let  us  note 
what  his  conclusions  are.  He  believes  in  representative  democracy, 
with  votes  for  all.  While  he  does  not  assert  (and  indeed  practically 
denies)  that  all  men  are  born  equal,  he  does  urge  that  they  should  have 
equal  rights  as  citizens  and  voters.  He  advocates  political  equality. 

The  inherent  contradiction  in  Mill's  position  is  obvious.  His  argu- 
ment about  political  equality  can  lead  only  to  socialism.  There  can 
be  no  equality  between  millionaires  and  paupers.  Votes  for  all  are  a 
mockery  where  there  are  vast  differences  in  wealth.  If  citizens  are  to 
be  politically  equal  it  is  absurd  to  allow  one  man  to  control  six  news- 
papers while  another  controls  nothing — not  even  himself.  But  how 
can  these  inequalities  be  prevented?  By  just  such  governmental 
interference  and  confiscation  as  Mill  has  already  rejected  in  the  name 
of  liberty.  His  two  doctrines  are  incompatible.  He  wants  to  equalise 
citizens  as  voters  while  simultaneously  freeing  them  as  traders.  The 
result  can  only  be  the  nationalisation  of  industries,  the  probably  fatal 
results  of  which  Mill  was  himself  the  first  to  point  out.  The  measures 
taken  to  ensure  equality — the  measures  taken  indeed  as  a  result  of 

'  MilL  op.  cit.  p.  14 L 
'  If)i(t.  p.  157. 


DEMOCRACY    JUSTIFIED     BY     UTILITY  223 

that  equality — are  those  certain  to  destroy  the  freedom  in  which  Mill 
so  passionately  believed.  He  was  manifestly  uneasy  about  his  whole 
position.  He  played  with  and  even  recommended  devices  like  propor- 
tional representation  and  even  plural  voting  for  the  highly  educated 
or  intelligent.  He  opposed  secret  voting  and  the  payment  of  deputies 
while  demanding  votes  for  women.  In  some  of  his  arguments  it  is 
difficult  to  see  even  the  principles  of  Utilitarianism;  he  seems  rather 
to  be  guided  by  mere  preference.  But  no  devices  of  voting  or  electing 
could  help  him  to  escape  from  the  dilemma  in  which,  like  so  many 
later  theorists,  he  had  become  involved.  To  his  main  problem  he  could 
find  no  answer;  probably  because  there  is  none. 


CHAPTER    XVIII 

Democracy  carried  to  its  Logical  Conclusion 


JEREMY  BENTHAM'S  doctrine  that  the  individual  knows  his 
own  business  best  remained  the  gospel  in  England  until  about 
1874.  The  industrialisation  of  Britain  between  about  1840  and  1874 
was  unhampered  by  State  interference  except  in  very  minor  details. 
To  say  that  this  was  due  to  Bentham's  influence  would,  of  course,  be 
wrong.  But  those  who  had  already  decided  against  intervention 
could  and  did  quote  the  utilitarians  when  justifying  their  inaction. 
The  unimpeded  growth  of  the  manufacturing  towns  brought  wealth 
to  many,  and  with  wealth  came  political  power.  The  English  aris- 
tocracy, reinforced  successively  by  West  India  Merchants,  East 
India  Nabobs,  Shipping  Magnates  and  Cotton  Manufacturers,  was 
expanded  again  to  include  Hardware  Manufacturers,  Stockbrokers, 
Railway  Directors  and  Engineers.  We  read  much  in  the  literature  of 
the  period  of  the  social  difficulties  experienced  by  the  newly  prosper- 
ous; nor  were  these  wholly  imaginary.  But  the  two  basic  facts  were 
these:  the  successful  manufacturers  mostly  wanted  to  join  the 
aristocracy  and  the  aristocracy  would  usually  admit  them.  It  would 
perhaps  be  truer  to  say  that  it  was  the  manufacturer's  wife  who 
wanted  to  be  a  lady  and  her  daughter  who  became  one.  The  effect, 
however,  was  the  same.  Had  the  newly  rich  wanted  to  destroy 
aristocracy  as  such,  and  had  the  aristocracy  been  exclusive,  the 
history  of  England  would  have  been  different.  There  would  have  been 
revolution. 

As  it  was,  the  privileges  of  aristocracy  were  extended  to  an  ever- 
widening  circle.  This  probably  happens  in  any  aristocracy.  In  England 
it  was  accelerated,  however,  by  the  development  of  the  public  schools 
(a  by-product  of  the  railways)  as  a  device  for  assimilating  the  middle 
class  into  the  aristocracy.  These  schools  catered  not  only  for  the 
wealthy  but  for  the  merely  professional  and  aspiring.  Partly  as  a 
result  of  this  educational  device  there  was  soon  very  little  social  gulf 
between  those  with  five  thousand  and  those  with  fifty  thousand  a 
year;  and  less,  if  anything,  between  those  with  two  and  those  with 
six  generations  of  established  wealth  behind  them.  Clergy,  Lawyers 
and  Physicians  claimed  to  rank  as  gentlemen.  Bankers  tried  to  look 
like  Lawyers  and  Schoolmasters  dressed  as  Clergy,  the  Merchant  had 
his  commission  in  the  Volunteers  and  the  Moneylender  his  place  in 

224 


DEMOCRACY     CARRIED     TO     ITS     CONCLUSION  225 

the  country.  A  sort  of  shabby  gentility  extended  down  to  commercial 
travellers  and  clerks.  There  was  no  threat  to  aristocracy  from  those 
who  believed  themselves  to  be  on  the  fringes  of  it. 

There  were  always,  however,  a  number  of  the  more  or  less  pros- 
perous who  were  opposed  to  aristocracy  on  principle.  These  were  the 
nonconformists,  sundered  from  their  social  betters  by  an  abyss  of 
their  own  digging.  Some  of  the  seventeenth  century  sects  still  survived 
but  these  were  somewhat  overshadowed  by  the  Methodist  groups  of 
eighteenth  century  origin.  The  Victorian  nonconformists  were  well 
fitted  to  take  advantage  of  the  economic  opportunities  of  their  day 
and  many  of  them  became  prominent  in  the  life  of  the  industrial 
towns.  It  was  always  manifest  that  the  nonconformist  (unless  a 
Quaker)  could  not  be  a  gentleman  as  well.  He  disapproved  of  the 
gentry  as  frivolous  and  immoral,  addicted  to  wine,  gambling,  horse- 
racing,  theatre-going  and  profanity.  He  did  not  aspire  to  join  them  in 
the  hunting  field  or  the  officers'  mess.  He  did  not  wish  to  be  seen  in 
the  ballroom,  on  the  grouse-moor  or  even  in  the  bar  parlour.  He 
disapproved  of  the  public  schools  and  his  sons  were  as  effectively 
excluded  from  college  by  their  upbringing  as  by  the  law.  His  surplus 
energies  went  in  organising  temperance  societies  and  sabbath-day 
schools.  He  came  nearest  to  conviviality  at  a  Chapel  tea-party  and 
nearest  to  pleasure  in  deploring  the  moral  shortcomings  of  others. 
The  nonconformist  was  the  natural  leader  of  democracy.  It  was  under 
his  guidance  that  the  more  extreme  liberals  became  socialists.  The 
result  is  that  English,  as  opposed  to  continental,  socialism  has  always 
retained  an  aura  of  dissent,  a  faint  taste  of  cocoa  and  a  just  percep- 
tible odour  of  pitch-pine  pews,  it  is  connected,  not  of  necessity  but 
by  historical  association,  with  total  abstinence,  adult  education  and 
that  slight  untidiness  which  goes  with  home-woven  tweed.  Many  of 
those  concerned  in  the  early  Labour  movement  had,  in  addition, 
some  family  connection  with  earlier  Radicals  or  with  the  Chartist 
Movement  of  1838-48.  They  knew  about  Robert  Owen  and  had  read 
the  works  of  John  Stuart  Mill. 

Although,  however,  there  were  drawing-room  Marxists  before 
1874,  it  was  not  they  who  began  the  move  towards  socialism.  It  was 
the  Tory  leader,  Disraeli,  who  took  the  decisive  step;  not  perhaps 
through  any  belief  in  democracy  but  from  a  recognition  of  the 
inevitable.  He  had  a  great  sympathy  for  the  working  man  but  few 
illusions  about  democracy  as  such. 

...  If  you  establish  a  democracy,  you  must  in  due  season  reap  the 
fruits  of  a  democracy.  You  will  in  due  season  have  great  impatience  of 
the  public  burdens  combined  in  due  season  with  great  increase  of  the 
public  expenditure.  You  will  in  due  season  reap  the  fruits  of  such 
united  influence.  You  will  in  due  season  have  wars  entered  into  from 


226  THE    EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

passion,  and  not  from  reason;  and  you  will  in  due  season  submit  to 
peace  ignominiously  sought  and  ignominiously  obtained,  which  will 
diminish  your  authority  and  perhaps  endanger  your  independence. 
You  will,  in  due  season,  with  a  democracy  find  that  your  property  is  less 
valuable  and  that  your  freedom  is  less  complete.^ 

It  was  Disraeli,  nevertheless,  who  introduced  the  Reform  Bill  of 
1867,  doubling  the  number  of  voters.  The  Liberals  gained  the  first 
election  on  the  new  register  but  the  newly  enfranchised  artisans  soon 
turned  against  liberalism.  They  wanted,  not  the  protection  of  private 
enterprise  against  interference  but  the  protection  of  the  working  man 
against  private  enterprise.  They  wanted  exactly  what  the  Benthamites 
had  always  denied  them.  They  voted,  therefore,  for  the  Conservatives, 
bringing  Disraeli  back  to  office  in  1874.  And  it  was  Disraeli  who  gave 
the  British  their  first  experience  of  virtually  socialist  legislation.  An 
Act  of  1874  limited  the  working  week  to  56  hours.  By  an  Act  of  1875, 
the  Trades  Unions  were  legalised.  A  Public  Health  Act  of  1876  and 
an  Artisans'  Dwelling  Act  were  fresh  evidence  of  a  new  trend  in 
legislation.  Disraeli  might  be  accepted  by  the  aristocrats  but  he  had 
been  brought  into  power  by  working-class  votes. 

From  about  1875  the  English  socialists  began  to  diverge  from  the 
Liberal  Party  of  which  they  had  once  formed  the  left  wing.  The  two 
working-class  members  of  parliament  elected  in  1874  found  them- 
selves more  often  voting  with  the  Conservatives.  But  the  views  of 
other  socialists  began  to  become  more  extreme.  This  was  partly  due 
to  the  great  Trade  Depression  of  1877-78,  which  seemed  to  prove  what 
the  Marxists  said  about  the  impending  doom  of  capitalism.  Then 
came  the  bad  harvest  of  1879. 

...  It  rained  continuously.  Everywhere  the  harvest  blackened  in  the 
fields,  and  farmers  were  faced  with  ruin,  landlords  with  depleted 
rentals.  In  England  and  Wales  alone  three  million  sheep  died  of  rot. 
Meanwhile  industry  struggled  against  one  of  those  periodic  slumps 
which  seemed  inseparable  from  the  capitalist  system  .  .  .  for  industry 
the  trade  depression  of  the  early  eighties  was  only  a  passing  phase.  .  .  . 
But  for  English  agriculture  the  blackened  crops  of  1879  and  the  years 
of  continued  rain  and  cold  that  followed  marked  the  end  of  an  era.  It 
never  recovered.^ 

This  turning  point  in  the  national  way  of  life  was  another  factor  in 
the  rise  of  socialism.  It  could  hardly  have  achieved  the  same  measure 
of  success  in  a  largely  agricultural  society. 

While  parting  company  with  the  liberals  the  early  socialists  also 
tended  to  differ  among  themselves.  Most  of  the  socialist  societies 
were  more  or  less  united  in  the  Social  Democratic  Federation,  which 

^  Life  of  Disraeli.  Monypenny  and  Buckle.  Vol.  L  p.  1608. 
^English  Saga,  1840-1940.  Arthur  Bryant.  London,  1953.  p.  267. 


DEMOCRACY     CARRIED     TO    ITS    CONCLUSION  227 

was  inspired  by  Marxism  and  led  by  H.  M.  Hyndman.  There  was  also, 
however,  the  Independent  Labour  Party,  led  by  James  Keir  Hardie 
and  drawing  its  support  from  the  Trades  Unions.  Then  there  was 
founded,  in  1885,  the  Fabian  Society,  with  a  more  intellectual 
membership  gathered  round  Sidney  Webb,  H.  G.  Wells,  and  George 
Bernard  Shaw.  Before  that,  in  1884,  the  Social  Democratic  Federation 
— which  had  failed  to  obtain  much  working-class  support — split  in 
two.  The  Federation  lived  on,  with  Hyndman  and  John  Burns  as 
leaders,  but  William  Morris,  Crane,  Bax,  Eleanor  Marx  and  their 
friends  left  it  to  form  the  Socialist  League,  which  ultimately  died  out. 
It  is  doubtful  whether  William  Morris  can  be  counted  as  a  socialist 
at  all.  He  should  rather  perhaps  be  classed,  with  Gandhi,  as  a 
democrat  who  saw  the  evil  in  industrialism  itself  irrespective  of  its 
private  or  state  ownership.  He  wanted  to  reverse  the  whole  trend  of 
the  period  in  which  he  lived.  The  genuine  socialists,  including  Webb 
and  Shaw,  accepted  industrialism  and  were  mainly  concerned  with  its 
immediate  and  less  immediate  implications. 

Events  which  mark  the  progress  of  the  Labour  Movement  are  the 
Trafalgar  Square  riots  of  1887,  led  by  John  Burns  and  Cunninghame 
Graham;  the  London  Dock  strike  of  1889;  the  publication  of  William 
Morris's  News  from  Nowhere  in  1890;  the  Trades  Union  Congress 
reaching  a  membership  of  about  1,200,000  in  1892;  and  finally,  in 
1899,  the  decision  of  the  Trades  Union  Congress  to  seek  to  gain 
increased  representation  for  the  Labour  Movement.  This  led  to 
fifteen  Labour  candidates  standing  for  Parliament  in  1900,  of  whom 
two  were  elected.  In  1906  there  was  an  electoral  triumph  for  Liberal- 
Labour  candidates,  twenty-nine  being  elected,  the  Miners'  Federation 
gaining  fourteen  seats  for  itself.  It  was  not  very  clear,  at  this  stage, 
what  the  Labour  Party's  principles  were.  Their  programme  and 
party  organisation  began  to  appear  in  1908.  This  narrative  omits, 
however,  the  most  important  aspect  of  the  Movement.  For  Liberals 
and  Conservatives  each  adopted  virtually  socialist  measures  in 
response  to,  or  anticipating,  Labour  demands.  These  included  the 
Local  Government  Act  of  1888,  the  Housing  Act  of  1890,  the  Act  by 
which  education  was  provided  free  of  charge  in  1891,  the  imposition 
of  Death  Duties  in  1893  and  the  Workmen's  Compensation  Act  of 
1897.  Both  through  central  and  local  governments,  the  members  of 
the  Fabian  Society  were  able  to  secure  many  of  their  objects  even 
before  1906. 

Between  1906  and  1914  there  were  many  further  reforms,  many  of 
them  initiated  by  Lloyd  George,  then  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer. 
Acts  provided  for  the  feeding  and  medical  inspection  of  school- 
children, for  limiting  the  coal  miner  to  an  eight-hour  working  day, 
for  fixing  a  minimum  wage  in  certain  industries,  for  setting  up  Labour 


228  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

Exchanges,  for  Housing  and  Town  Planning  and  for  Old  Age 
Pensions.  The  House  of  Lords,  attempting  to  resist  Lloyd  George's 
Budget  of  1909,  lost  its  effective  power  under  the  Parliament  Act  of 
191 1.  When  Lloyd  George  became  Prime  Minister  in  1916  the  English 
Revolution  had  been  virtually  accomplished.  The  War  finished  what 
pre-war  legislation  had  begun.  The  way  was  prepared  for  the  first 
Labour  Government  of  1923,  the  General  Strike  of  1926  and  the 
second  Labour  Government  of  1929.  Roughly  speaking,  Britain  had 
become  a  pure  democracy  by  1910,  with  an  evident  tendency  towards 
socialism.  Successive  Ministers,  of  whatever  party,  had  to  compete 
for  votes  by  offering  higher  benefits  to  the  poor  and  laying  heavier 
taxes  on  the  rich.  The  levelling-out  process  may  not  be  complete  but 
the  trend  is  towards  its  completion  and  the  achievement  of  a  virtually 
socialist  society. 

The  British  experience  in  progressing  from  democracy  to  socialism 
was  closely  paralleled  in  other  countries  as  from  about  the  same 
period.  Socialism  was  strongly  established  in  Germany  from  the 
1860''s  and  led  to  legislation  of  a  more  or  less  socialist  character. 
Ferdinand  Lassalle  had  led  the  German  Workers  Union  until  his 
death  in  1864,  the  Union  thereafter  merging  with  the  Marxists  to 
form  the  Social-Democratic  Party  in  1875.  This  was  suppressed  by 
Bismarck  in  1878  after  an  attempt  had  been  made  to  assassinate  the 
Emperor.  Socialism  revived,  nevertheless,  and  Bismarck  tried  to  fore- 
stall the  movement  by  legislation  of  his  own,  which  was  continued 
after  his  fall  in  1890.  Trade  Laws  were  introduced  in  1881  and  sub- 
sequently; compulsory  insurance  against  sickness  in  1883;  insurance 
against  industrial  accidents  in  1884;  old  age  pensions  in  1889;  and  a 
Workers'  Protection  Law,  which  restricted  the  hours  of  work  in  1891. 
The  Socialists  were  not  discouraged  and  by  1903  they  numbered  three 
million  voters  and  held  eighty-one  seats  in  the  Reichstag.  Their  success 
was  limited,  however,  by  their  Marxist  violence  and  talk  of  revolution. 
They  lost  their  influence  in  1914. 

The  French  Socialists,  well  established  by  1880,  were  also  under 
Marxist  influence  but  suff'ered  from  disagreement  among  themselves. 
They  had  split  by  1890  into  four  groups,  the  French  Labour  Party, 
the  Federation  of  Socialist  Workers,  the  Socialist  Revolutionaries  and 
the  Anarchists.  Members  of  the  last-named  group  managed  to 
assassinate  the  President  of  the  Republic  in  1894.  Despite  such 
episodes  as  that  the  various  groups  (by  now  well  represented  in  the 
Chamber)  managed  to  agree  on  a  programme  in  1896.  This  was  the 
work  of  Jaures  and  Millerand  and  led  to  socialist  success  in  the 
elections  of  1902.  But  Marxist  dogmatism  soon  produced  fresh 
disagreements  as  a  result  of  which  the  moderate  socialists  took  oflRce 
as  liberals.  One  of  these,  Briand,  was  Prime  Minister  in  1906.  Jaures 


DEMOCRACY     CARRIED     TO     ITS     CONCLUSION  229 

devoted  himself  to  pacifist  propaganda  and  was  assassinated  in  1912. 

Socialism  in  Italy  dates  from  about  1890  but  was  made  illegal  in 
1894.  More  socialists  having  been  elected  at  the  elections  of  1895,  the 
party  was  again  legalised.  The  liberals,  moreover,  introduced  (in 
1896-1905)  compulsory  insurance  against  industrial  accidents  and 
sickness,  old  age  pensions  and  further  legislation  concerning  public 
health,  hours  of  work,  subsidised  housing  and  labour  exchanges.  The 
Italian  Socialists  thus  gained  an  indirect  success  and  were  still 
numerous  when  Mussolini  was  editing  the  Avanti  in  1912.  They 
organised  a  General  Strike  in  Emilia  in  1914  but  their  activities 
were  then  cut  short  by  the  beginning  of  the  First  World  War. 

Socialism  in  the  United  States  appeared  in  1910  when  Woodrow 
Wilson  was  first  heard  of  as  Democratic  candidate  for  the  Governor- 
ship of  New  Jersey.  Wilson  was  then  regarded  as  a  conservative. 
When  elected  as  President,  however,  in  1913,  he  proclaimed  the 
New  Freedom.  This  involved  a  graduated  income  tax  in  favour  of  the 
poor,  a  basic  eight-hour  day  for  railwaymen  and  other  workers  and 
the  establishment  of  Boards  of  Mediation  to  arbitrate  in  industrial 
disputes.  It  was  a  small  beginning,  although  a  foretaste  of  F.  D. 
Roosevelt's  New  Deal  of  1933,  but  it  was  an  illustration  of  the  fact 
that  even  the  United  States  was  experiencing,  belatedly  and  to  a 
limited  extent,  the  influence  of  socialist  ideas. 

The  general  conclusion  to  be  drawn  is  that  democracy  in  Europe, 
fairly  widely  established  by  1875,  began  its  movement  towards  social- 
ism in  about  that  year.  The  movement  developed  strongly  in  the 
period  1880-1900,  most  Socialist  ideas  having  reached  their  virtually 
final  form  by  about  1895.  There  was  a  peak  of  politiccil  success  in 
1902-1906  but  soon  afterwards  a  loss  of  direction  and  impetus.  The 
Marxist  groups  still  demanded  revolution  as  an  end  in  itself,  as  an 
essential  step  in  progress.  The  more  moderate  groups  found  that  their 
original  demands  had  been  largely  met  and  that  what  remained  of 
their  programme  seemed  within  reach  by  constitutional  means.  One 
formerly  regarded  as  a  rebel  could  end,  like  Sidney  Webb,  with  a 
peerage.  There  was  a  pause  during  which  the  extremists,  who  now 
held  the  initiative,  prepared  the  way  for  the  next  move.  Socialism  in  its 
democratic  form  was  intellectually  finished  before  1912;  finished,  in 
fact,  before  it  reached  America  at  all.  It  was  stagnant  after  the  First 
World  War  when  the  counter-offensive  began.  It  needed  no  killing. 
It  was  already  dead. 

In  the  field  of  strictly  political  ideas,  the  Socialists  had  little  to 
contribute.  Accepting  the  liberal  notion  of  political  equality,  they 
simply  pointed  out  that  it  was  meaningless  unless  coupled  with 
economic  equality.  They  merely  carried  the  doctrine  to  its  logical 
conclusion.  Some  of  them,  it  is  true,  wrestled  with  the  basic  idea  of 


230  THK     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

Equality,  trying  to  justify  it  in  other  than  rehgious  terms.  Such  is  the 
book  called  Equality  by  R.  H.  Tawney,  published  in  1931  and 
dedicated  to  Sidney  and  Beatrice  Webb.  Tawney  does  not  so  much 
defend  Equality  as  ask  what  justification  there  can  be  for  inequality. 
He  concludes  that, 

...  it  is  the  mark  of  a  civilised  society  to  aim  at  eliminating  such 
inequalities  as  have  their  source  not  in  individual  diflferences,  but  in  its 
own  organisation,  and  that  individual  differences,  which  are  a  source  of 
social  energy,  are  more  likely  to  ripen  and  find  expression  if  social 
inequalities  are,  as  far  as  practicable,  diminished.^ 

Other  authors  have  struggled  with  the  same  problem,  notably 
David  Thomson,'-  but  usually  with  the  air  of  finding  reasons  for 
something  already  generally  agreed,  a  policy  which  no  sane  man  could 
really  propose  to  reverse.  Apart  from  discussions  such  as  these,  the 
British  Socialists  have  mostly  been  glad  to  accept  Parliamentary 
Government  as  they  found  it.  The  Webbs  once  proposed  having  two 
Parliaments  instead  of  one  but  the  rest  have  shown  little  interest  in 
political  theory  or  in  any  but  economic  reforms.  Political  wisdom 
ends  for  them  with  the  establishment  of  Universal  Suffrage. 

While  there  is  little  to  say  about  the  political  thought  of  the 
Socialists,  it  would  be  wrong  to  conclude  this  chapter  without  mention 
of  the  two  thinkers  of  the  Socialist  period  in  Britain,  whose  views,  in 
retrospect,  seem  most  significant.  One  of  these  was  George  Bernard 
Shaw,  an  important  member  of  the  Fabian  Society  in  its  early  days 
but  never  an  accepted  leader  of  the  Labour  Party.  He  was  the  most 
original  thinker  the  English  Socialists  ever  had  among  them  and  he 
proved  too  original  at  times  for  their  liking.  What  is  especially 
interesting,  however,  about  his  line  of  thought  is  that  he  came  to 
think  socialism  more  important  than  democracy.  For  him,  as  for 
many  less  gifted,  socialism  itself  had  become  the  aim  and  democracy 
at  best  the  means.  Democracy  for  him  came  to  have  a  special  mean- 
ing; one  which  the  actual  politicians  may  have  shared  but  could  never 
have  publicly  avowed. 

Democracy  means  the  organization  of  society  for  the  benefit  and  at 
the  expense  of  everybody  indiscriminately  and  not  for  the  benefit  of  a 
privileged  class. 

A  nearly  desperate  difficulty  in  the  way  of  its  realization  is  the 
delusion  that  the  method  of  securing  it  is  to  give  votes  to  everybody, 
which  is  the  one  certain  method  of  defeating  it.  Adult  suffrage  kills  it 
dead.  Highminded  and  well-informed  people  desire  it;  but  they  are  in 
a  negligible  minority  at  the  polling  stations.  Mr.  Everybody,  as 
Voltaire  called  him — and  we  must  now  include  Mrs.  Everybody  and 

'  Equality.  R.  H.  Tawney.  London,  195L 

-  Equality.  David  Thomson.  Cambridge,  1949. 


DEMOCRACY     CARRIED     TO     ITS     CONCLUSION  231 

Miss  Everybody — far  from  desiring  the  great  development  of  public 
organization  and  governmental  activity  which  democracy  involves, 
has  a  dread  of  being  governed  at  all.  .  .  .^ 

He  goes  on  to  explain  the  ignorance  and  indifference  of  the  voter 
and  the  reluctance  of  the  intelligent  person  to  take  any  part  in  politics. 
Only  a  few  are  fit  to  take  part  in  public  affairs. 

I  do  not  see  any  way  out  of  this  difficulty  as  long  as  our  democrats 
persist  in  assuming  that  Mr.  Everyman  is  omniscient  as  well  as 
ubiquitous,  and  refuse  to  reconsider  the  suffrage  in  the  light  of  facts 
and  commonsense.  How  much  control  of  the  Government  does  Mr. 
Everyman  need  to  protect  himself  against  tyranny?  How  much  is  he 
capable  of  exercising  without  ruining  himself  and  wrecking  civiliza- 
tion? Are  these  questions  really  unanswerable?  T  think  not.  .  .  . 

It  is  a  matter  of  simple  natural  history  that  humans  vary  widely  in 
political  competence.  They  vary  not  only  from  individual  to  individual 
but  from  age  to  age  in  the  same  individual.  In  the  face  of  this  flat  fact 
it  is  silly  to  go  on  pretending  that  the  voice  of  the  people  is  the  voice  of 
God.  When  Voltaire  said  that  Mr.  Everybody  was  wiser  than  Mr. 
Anybody  he  had  never  seen  adult  suffrage  at  work.  It  takes  all  sorts  to 
make  a  world;  and  to  maintain  civilization  some  of  these  sorts  have  to 
be  killed  like  mad  dogs  whilst  others  have  to  be  put  in  command  of  the 
State.  Until  the  differences  are  classified  we  cannot  have  a  scientific 
suffrage;  and  without  a  scientific  suffrage  every  attempt  at  democracy 
will  defeat  itself  as  it  has  always  done.^ 

Although  he  concedes  that  average  or  representative  people  should 
have  the  means  of  voicing  their  grievances,^  he  maintains  that  'The 
legislators  and  rulers  should,  on  the  contrary,  be  as  unrepresentative 
of  Everyman  as  possible,  short  of  being  inhuman'.  He  wants  to  have 
people  classified  and  graded  according  to  their  political  competence, 
not  to  abolish  elections  altogether  but  to  eliminate  all  candidates 
without  the  necessary  mental  and  moral  qualifications  for  office.  He 
writes  an  interesting  chapter  (Chap.  XXXVI  op.  cit.)  on  the  kinds  of 
test  which  might  be  used  to  grade  citizens  according  to  their  political 
competence.  And  he  complains,  in  his  summary*  that  'we  never  dream 
of  asking  whether  a  Secretary  of  State  has  ever  heard  of  Macaulay  or 
Marx,  nor  even  whether  he  can  read  the  alphabet'. 

There  is  much  in  this  of  lasting  value  and  interest  but  he  does  not 
explain  how  to  take  the  franchise  from  people  who  have  quite  recently 
been  granted  it.  He  discards  democracy — using  the  word  to  describe 
something  else — and  demands  a  new  and  better  constitution.  But  who 
can  approve  it  in  a  democratic  state?  Who  can  persuade  the  people 

'  Everybody's  Political  What's  What.  Bernard  Shaw.  London,  1944.  pp.  40-41. 

-  Bernard  Shaw.  op.  cit.  pp.  45-46. 

^  That  is,  in  a  second  or  Social  Parliament  as  proposed  by  the  Webbs. 

^  Bernard  Shaw.  op.  cit.  p.  366. 


232  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

to  surrender  the  most  part  of  their  theoretical  or  actual  powers?  Who 
but  a  dictator  could  create  and  empower  the  aristocracy  which  Shaw 
wishes  to  see  established?  And  how,  except  by  revolution,  could  the 
dictator  gain  office  himself?  In  defining  the  word  democracy  afresh, 
Shaw  emphasises  his  view  that  society  should  be  organised  for  the 
benefit  of  all,  not  merely  for  the  benefit  of  a  privileged  class.  He  was 
not  content,  for  example,  to  see  it  organised  for  the  benefit  of  a 
privileged  working  class  with  a  fifty-one  per  cent  majority.  He 
believed  in  equalising  income  sufficiently  to  abolish  classes  but  he 
had  ceased  to  believe  in  the  wisdom  of  the  people.  He  had  seen  it  at 
work  for  too  long. 

Contemporary  with  Bernard  Shaw  and  with  a  brain  as  original  was 
Hilaire  Belloc  (1870-1953),  whose  preferences  were  diametrically 
opposite  but  whose  conclusions  were,  in  one  respect,  almost  the  same. 
Belloc  was  a  liberal  democrat  and  utterly  opposed  to  socialism.  And 
whereas  Shaw  was  ready  to  jettison  democracy  when  he  found  it 
inconsistent  with  socialism,  Belloc  rejected  socialism  as  inconsistent 
with  democracy.  They  agreed,  that  is  to  say,  on  the  central  fact  of 
their  being  incompatible.  One  of  Belloc's  most  remarkable  works  is 
The  Servile  State,  written  in  1912.  That  book  and  the  Party  System 
(1911)  resulted  from  his  experience  as  a  Liberal  Member  of  Parlia- 
ment, for  Salford,  from  1906  to  1910.  In  other  words,  Belloc  entered 
Parliament  as  one  of  the  triumphant  Liberals  of  1906  and  witnessed, 
from  a  back  bench,  the  passing  of  the  more  or  less  sociahst  legislation 
which  led  up  to  the  Parliament  Act  of  1911.  His  conclusion  was  that 
Britain  had  taken  a  road  which  could  lead  only  to  slavery.  As  an 
historian  he  knew  how  difficult  it  is  to  prevent  slavery,  and  he  made 
this  clear  in  a  sentence  which  is  the  starting  point  of  his  argument: 

In  no  matter  what  field  of  the  European  past  we  make  our  research, 
we  find,  from  two  thousand  years  ago  upwards,  one  fundamental 
institution  whereupon  the  whole  of  society  reposes;  that  fundamental 
institution  is  Slavery.^ 

He  reminds  us  that  the  freedom  of  the  proletariat  is  a  recent  and 
precarious  state  of  affairs  to  be  maintained  only  by  ceaseless  demo- 
cratic vigilance.  A  Capitalist  State,  democratic  in  theory  but  with 
vast  differences  in  economic  status,  is,  he  points  out,  essentially 
unstable.  It  is  a  pyramid  balanced  upon  its  apex.  It  can  be  upset  at 
any  moment  by  a  democratic  attack  on  the  wealthy  or  a  capitalist 
attack  on  democracy.  The  theory  of  equality  and  the  concrete  facts 
are  too  much  at  variance  for  stability  to  be  achieved. 

If  the  Capitalist  State  is  in  unstable  equilibrium,  this  only  means  that 
it  is  seeking  a  stable  equilibrium,  and  that  Capitalism  cannot  but  be 
transformed  into  some  other  arrangement  wherein  Society  may  repose. 
'  T/ie  Servile  State.  Hilaire  Belloc.  London,  1912.  p.  31. 


DEMOCRACY     CARRIED     TO     ITS    CONCLUSION  233 

There  are  but  three  social  arrangements  which  can  replace  Capital- 
ism: Slavery,  Socialism,  and  Property.  .  .  . 

The  problem  turns,  remember,  upon  the  control  of  the  means  of 
production.  Capitalism  means  that  this  control  is  vested  in  the  hands 
of  few,  while  political  freedom  is  the  appanage  of  all.  If  this  anomaly 
cannot  endure,  from  its  insecurity  and  from  its  own  contradiction  with 
its  presumed  moral  basis,  you  must  either  have  a  transformation  of  the 
one  or  of  the  other  of  the  two  elements  which  combined  have  been 
found  unworkable.  These  two  factors  are  (1)  The  ownership  of  the 
means  of  Production  by  a  few;  (2)  The  Freedom  of  all.  To  solve 
Capitalism  you  must  get  rid  of  restricted  ownership,  or  of  freedom, 
or  of  both.^ 

The  abolition  of  restricted  ownership  can  be  brought  about  in  two 
ways,  either  by  redistributing  property  among  the  many  or  by  vesting 
it  in  the  State.  'The  essential  point  to  grasp  is  that  the  only  alternative 
to  private  property  is  public  property'.  The  choice  is  between  Distri- 
butism  and  Socialism.  But  the  redistribution  of  property,  in  an  indus- 
trial state,  is  politically  and  even  technically  difficult.  It  might  follow 
some  external  catastrophe  but  could  hardly  be  done  from  within, 
without  so  disturbing  'the  whole  network  of  economic  relations  as  to 
bring  ruin  at  once  to  the  whole  body  politic'.'^  The  difficulty,  in  fact, 
of  'redistributing'  a  railway  system  would  be  less  formidable  than 
that  of  persuading  the  employees  to  accept  property  in  the  railway 
(with  its  attendant  risks)  instead  of  a  secure  living  wage.  Belloc 
concludes,  reluctantly,  that  Capitalist  modes  of  thought  and  the 
division  of  society  into  employers  and  employed,  must  present  an 
almost  impossible  situation  to  the  distributist  reformer.  He  wants  to 
take  from  those  who  are  unwilling  to  relinquish  in  order  to  give  to 
those  who  are  unwilling  to  receive.  In  practice,  therefore,  it  is  only 
the  socialist  who  makes  any  progress. 

The  Socialist  movement  ...  is  itself  made  up  of  two  kinds  of  men: 
there  is  (a)  the  man  who  regards  the  public  ownership  of  the  means  of 
production  (and  the  consequent  compulsion  of  all  citizens  toworkunder 
the  direction  of  the  State)  as  the  only  feasible  solution  of  ourmodernills. 
There  is  also  (b)  the  man  who  loves  the  CoUectivist  ideal  in  itself,  who 
does  not  pursue  it  so  much  because  it  is  a  solution  of  modern  Capital- 
ism, as  because  it  is  an  ordered  and  regular  form  of  society  which 
appeals  to  him  in  itself.  He  loves  to  consider  the  ideal  of  a  State  in 
which  land  and  capital  shall  be  held  by  public  officials  who  shall  order 
other  men  about  and  so  preserve  them  from  the  consequences  of 
their  vice,  ignorance,  and  folly. 

These  types  are  perfectly  distinct,  in  many  respects  antagonistic, 
and  between  them  they  cover  the  whole  Socialist  movement.^ 

'  Belloc.  op.  cit.  pp.  97-98. 

^  Ihid.  p.  110. 

'  Ibid.  pp.  121-122. 


234  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

The  Socialist  party,  comprising  these  divergent  elements,  finds 
itself  confronted  with  the  formidable  entrenchments  of  Capitalism, 
strengthened  with  the  barbed  wire  of  legal,  moral  and  technical 
entanglement.  The  assault  is  not  going  to  be  easy.  There  is  a  parley. 
The  Socialist  leader  says  to  the  Capitalist  'I  desire  to  dispossess  you, 
and  meanwhile  I  am  determined  that  your  employees  shall  live 
tolerable  lives'.'  The  Capitalist  shows  that  the  attempt  to  evict  him 
can  lead  only  to  disaster.  But  he  is  willing  to  compromise.  While 
retaining  his  position,  he  will  make  the  workers'  lives  more  tolerable 
— provided  they  will  accept  certain  conditions,  to  be  agreed. 

This  idealist  social  reformer,  therefore,  finds  the  current  of  his 
demand  canalised.  As  to  one  part  of  it,  confiscation,  it  is  checked  and 
barred;  as  to  the  other,  securing  human  conditions  for  the  proletariat, 
the  gates  are  open.  Half  the  river  is  dammed  by  a  strong  weir,  but  there 
is  a  sluice,  and  that  sluice  can  be  lifted.  Once  lifted,  the  whole  force  of 
the  current  will  run  through  the  opportunity  so  afforded  it;  there  will 
it  scour  and  deepen  its  channel;  there  will  the  main  stream  learn  to 
run.^ 

In  other  words,  nearly  everything  that  the  humanitarian  socialist 
wants  can  be  achieved.  He  can  end  the  suffering  and  insecurity  of  the 
poor,  provided  they  will  accept  a  diminution  of  their  freedom;  for 
that  is  what  the  attached  conditions  will  amount  to.  The  Capitalist 
cannot  give  them  security  unless  they  will  do  as  they  are  told.  The 
idealist  Reformer  will  find  that  he  has  brought  about  the  Servile 
State.  What  of  his  colleague,  the  lover  of  statistics?  He  is  still  less 
likely  to  risk  a  frontal  assault,  without  even  moral  indignation  to 
drive  him  on.  He  finds,  in  fact,  that  all  he  really  cares  about — a  tidy 
system  and  a  high  salary  for  himself — can  be  gained  with  relative 
ease. 

To  such  a  man  the  Servile  State  is  hardly  a  thing  towards  which  he 
drifts,  it  is  rather  a  tolerable  alternative  to  his  ideal  Collectivist  State, 
which  alternative  he  is  quite  prepared  to  accept  and  regards  favour- 
ably. .  .  . 

The  so-called  'Socialist'  of  this  type  has  not  fallen  into  the  Servile 
State  by  a  miscalculation.  He  has  fathered  it;  he  welcomes  its  birth, 
he  foresees  his  power  over  its  future.^ 

Belloc  saw  the  beginnings  of  the  Servile  State  in  the  National 
Insurance  Act  of  1911,  partly  because  the  definition  of  the  persons  to 
be  compulsorily  insured  drew  the  line  between  the  proletariat  and  the 
free,  and  partly  because,  to  the  threat  of  unemployment  could  now 
be  added  the  threat  of  a  deprivation  of  savings. 


•  Belloc.  op.  cit.  pp.  124-125. 
'Ibid.  p.  125. 
'Ibid.  pp.  129-139. 


DEMOCRACY     CARRIED     TO     ITS     CONCLUSION  235 

A  man  has  been  compelled  by  law  to  put  aside  sums  from  his  wages 
as  insurance  against  unemployment.  But  he  is  no  longer  the  judge  of 
how  such  sums  shall  be  used.  They  are  not  in  his  possession;  they  are 
not  even  in  the  hands  of  some  society,  which  he  can  really  control. 
They  are  in  the  hands  of  a  Government  official.  'Here  is  work  offered 
you  at  twenty-five  shillings  a  week.  If  you  do  not  take  it  you  certainly 
shall  not  have  a  right  to  the  money  you  have  been  compelled  to  put 
aside.  If  you  will  take  it  the  sum  shall  still  stand  to  your  credit,  and 
when  next  in  my  judgment  your  unemployment  is  not  due  to  your 
recalcitrance  and  refusal  to  labour,  I  will  permit  you  to  have  some  of 
your  money:  not  otherwise'.  Dovetailing  in  with  this  machinery  of 
compulsion  is  all  that  mass  of  registration  and  docketing  which  is 
accumulating  through  the  use  of  Labour  Exchanges.  Not  only  will  the 
Official  have  the  power  to  enforce  special  contracts,  or  the  power  to 
coerce  individual  men  to  labour  under  the  threat  of  a  fine,  but  he  will 
also  have  a  series  of  dossiers  by  which  the  record  of  each  workman  can 
be  established.  No  man,  once  so  registered  and  known,  can  escape; 
and,  of  the  nature  of  the  system  the  numbers  caught  in  the  net  must 
steadily  increase  until  the  whole  mass  of  labour  is  mapped  out  and 
controlled. 

These  are  very  powerful  instruments  of  compulsion  indeed.  They 
already  exist.  They  are  already  a  part  of  our  laws.^ 

Belloc  lived  long  enough  to  see  the  logical  conclusion  of  the  process; 
the  legalised  'direction'  of  labour.  The  Servile  State  had  arrived,  as 
he  had  predicted  in  that  final  paragraph  with  which  his  book  is 
brought  almost  to  its  close: 

The  internal  strains  which  have  threatened  society  during  its 
Capitalist  phase  will  be  relaxed  and  eliminated,  and  the  community 
will  settle  down  upon  that  Servile  basis  which  was  its  foundation  before 
the  advent  of  the  Christian  faith,  from  which  that  faith  slowly  weaned 
it,  and  to  which  in  the  decay  of  that  faith  it  naturally  returns.^ 


'  Belloc.  op.  lit.  pp.  175-176. 
'  Ihid.  p.  183. 


PART    IV 

Dictatorship 


CHAPTER    XIX 

Democracy  in  Decline 


HILAIRE  BELLOC  tried  to  show  that,  in  an  industrial  com- 
munity at  least,  democracy  will  tend  to  turn  into  Socialism  or 
else  into  that  compromise  which  exists  in  what  he  termed  the  Servile 
State.  Subsequent  events  have  gone  some  way  to  justify  his  theory. 
They  have  also,  however,  led  many  to  suspect  that  the  alternative 
offered  is  an  unreal  one;  that  there  is  a  distinction  here  without  a 
difference.  In  Britain,  at  any  rate,  we  have  seen  private  enterprise 
swept  away  by  combines,  price-rings  and  trade  associations  to  the 
point  at  which  nationalisation,  when  it  comes,  makes  little  apparent 
difference.  When  the  possible  employers  in  a  particular  trade  have 
been  reduced,  by  successive  mergers,  to  perhaps  half-a-dozen;  when 
these  few  Boards  of  Directors,  perhaps  with  an  overlapping  member- 
ship, have  reached  agreement  with  each  other  about  prices,  wages  and 
quality  of  product,  they  cannot  resist  nationalisation  in  the  name  of 
free  competition  for  (as  everyone  knows)  there  is  none.  In  a  period, 
moreover,  of  impending  slump  they  may  actually  welcome  national- 
isation as  tending  to  fix  salaries  at  a  level  which  future  profits  might 
not  otherwise  justify.  To  the  employees  the  change  may  be  welcome 
for  the  same  reason.  To  the  consumers  the  change  will  probably 
make  no  difference  at  all.  Socialism  and  the  Servile  State  would 
appear  to  be  much  the  same  thing.  In  either  form  of  democracy  the 
voters  have  traded  their  liberty  in  exchange  for  secure  wages.  In  each, 
democracy  remains  effective  enough  to  ensure  that  the  level  of  wages 
is  at  least  maintained.  In  neither  form  is  democracy  very  consistent 
with  freedom. 

Modern  European  democracy,  in  a  more  or  less  socialist  form, 
reached  its  highest  level  of  popularity  in  1918.  The  First  World  War 
could  be  represented  as  a  conflict  between  obsolete  and  progressive 
countries;  between  despotism  and  democracy.  Its  immediate  and  most 
spectacular  result  was  the  collapse  of  monarchy  in  Germany,  Austria- 
Hungary  and  Russia.  The  world  could  be  re-shaped  according  to  the 
views  of  the  democratic  countries,  Britain,  France  and  the  United 
States.  More  than  that,  the  result  of  the  war  had  seemed  to  show  that 
the  democratic  way  of  life  could  produce  armies  which  were  actually 
more  effective  than  those  ordered  into  battle  by  despots.  The  soldiers 
of  democracy  had  something,  it  was  thought,  for  which  they  could 

238 


DEMOCRACY     IN     DECLINE  239 

fight.  Athens  must  eternally  prove  superior  to  Sparta,  Grant  must 
always  triumph  over  Lee.  The  making  of  peace  was  to  be  the  work  of 
genuine  democrats — Briand,  son  of  an  innkeeper  of  Nantes,  Lloyd 
George,  son  of  an  itinerant  teacher  and  brought  up  by  a  cobbler,  and 
Woodrow  Wilson,  the  college  president  and  idealist.  The  future  of 
the  world  seemed  brighter  than  ever  before. 

What  is  extraordinary,  in  retrospect,  is  the  speed  with  which  the 
vision  disappeared.  Readers  of  Plato  and  of  Karl  Marx  might  have 
expected  to  see  democracy  collapse  in  anarchy  and  revolution. 
Readers  of  John  Stuart  Mill  might  have  questioned  whether  socialism 
was  compatible  with  liberty.  But  none  surely  would  have  expected 
it  to  collapse  as  quickly  as  it  did.  Representative  Democracy  had 
become  the  vogue  by  about  1875.  It  had  led  to  Socialism,  which  was 
widespread  in  1895  and  triumphant  by  about  1910.  By  1930  the  period 
of  socialistic  democracy  was  practically  over.  'Socialism'  wrote 
Joseph  Conrad  'must  inevitably  end  in  Caesarism',  but  even  those 
who  shared  his  fears  would  hardly  have  dared  to  predict  that  the 
socialist  era  would  be  as  brief  as  it  proved  to  be. 

In  considering  the  question  of  how  long  a  democratic  phase  of 
government  may  be  expected  to  last,  we  can  appeal  to  reason,  to 
history  and  to  recent  experience.  Merely  theoretical  discussion  would 
lead  us  to  expect  one  of  two  things.  Either  the  proletariat  would 
establish  a  socialist  state  or  it  would  fail  as  against  middle-class 
opposition.  If  it  succeeded,  the  State  would  acquire  such  an  accumu- 
lation of  centralised  power — political,  economic,  religious  and  cultural 
— that  some  of  the  former  upper  class  would  be  goaded  into  revolt. 
Supposing  the  conspiracy  or  rising  should  attract  any  measure  of 
support,  in  the  name  of  freedom,  the  strongest  personality  in  the 
government  would  make  himself  dictator  during  the  emergency: 
thereafter,  the  rising  crushed,  he  would  remain  dictator  as  a  pre- 
caution against  any  future  threat  of  the  same  kind.  In  the  opposite 
case,  supposing  that  the  socialist  police  state  has  not  been  firmly 
established,  the  middle  classes  might  rally  to  protect  their  lives  and 
property.  In  the  struggle  they  will  appoint  a  leader  or  more  probably 
allow  the  leader  to  appoint  himself.  By  the  time  the  conflict  ends 
in  a  middle-class  victory,  the  leader  will  have  become  dictator; 
and  he  must  remain  dictator,  this  time  in  a  capitalist  police  state,  to 
prevent  the  proletariat  rising  again.  Civil  War  of  this  kind  seems  likely 
to  produce  dictatorship  in  any  case;  nor  do  dictatorships  of  different 
origin  differ  from  each  other  as  much  as  might  be  supposed.  For  the 
dictator,  in  the  last  resort,  is  not  so  much  a  master  of  intrigue  and 
cruelty  as  a  man  with  sufficient  moral  courage  to  open  fire.  It  is  some- 
times thought  that  the  invention  of  automatic  weapons  has  ended  for 
ever  the  effectiveness  of  the  mob,  putting  all  the  trump  cards  in  the 


240  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

hands  of  whatever  government  there  is.  But  revolutions  are  not 
brought  about,  have  never  been  brought  about,  by  weapons;  nor  is  it 
by  weapons  that  a  rising  is  suppressed.  Governments  which  collapse 
when  mobbed  are  usually  lacking  not  weapons  but  courage.  At  some 
point  in  a  situation  of  growing  disorder  someone  must  give  the  order 
to  fire  or  charge.  In  a  capital  city — with  the  certainty  that  half  the 
casualties  will  be  innocent  bystanders — this  requires  a  fair  amount  of 
courage,  it  is  easiest  for  a  foreigner,  a  Prince  Rupert,  a  Napoleon,  a 
General  Dyer;  and  easier  still  if  the  troops  are  also  foreign — Scottish 
mercenaries  in  Paris,  Swiss  mercenaries  in  Rome  or  German  mer- 
cenaries in  Algiers.  But  the  risk  is  considerable,  for  the  man  who  takes 
the  responsibility  may  never  be  forgiven  by  the  people  and  may  easily 
be  disowned  by  his  own  side.  That  is  why  a  feeble  government  will 
allow  riot  and  bloodshed  to  go  on  for  days  while  its  leaders  twitter 
among  themselves  about  humanity.  Some  twenty  cartridges  will 
disperse  the  average  crowd  but  a  man  like  Napoleon  does  not  stop  at 
that;  he  cheerfully  uses  artillery.  The  smoke  has  hardly  cleared  before 
he  finds  himself  dictator. 

Once  a  man  has  become  dictator  he  cannot,  usually,  abdicate.  If 
he  does,  the  enemies  he  has  made  will  kill  him.  Sulla  resigned,  it  is 
true,  and  lived  for  a  year.  But  Julius  Caesar  could  not  have  resigned 
— he  was  murdered  even  while  still  in  office.  Pompey  could  not  have 
resigned,  nor  Cromwell,  nor  Napoleon.  It  is  the  knowledge  of  his 
own  danger  that  drives  the  dictator  on  to  eliminate  his  opponents. 
Nor  does  it  very  much  matter  whether  he  began,  like  Julius  Caesar, 
as  a  democratic  leader,  or  like  Sulla  as  the  saviour  of  the  oligarchs. 
Once  in  office  he  must  rule  as  he  can.  That  is  why  Gandhi  was 
supremely  right  in  maintaining,  as  he  did,  that  an  egalitarian  democ- 
racy cannot  be  achieved  by  force  but  only  by  persuasion.  Once 
violence  has  been  used,  the  feelings  aroused  will  make  further  violence 
unavoidable.  And  in  a  state  of  tension  and  fear  the  party  led  by  one 
will  always  (given  anything  like  equal  chances)  defeat  the  party  led  by 
a  committee.  There  are  therefore  abstract  reasons  for  doubting 
whether  socialism,  as  a  phase  in  the  decline  of  democracy,  can  be 
expected  to  last  for  long.  There  are  abstract  reasons  again  for 
supposing  that  it  will  lead  to  dictatorship. 

Does  history,  generally,  bear  out  this  conclusion?  For  early 
civilisations  the  evidence  is  scanty.  We  know  that  ancient  Egypt  had 
a  form  of  revolution  against  a  ruling  class.  The  sage  Ipuwer  bewailed 
the  results  in  phrases  which  suggest  what  had  happened.  'The 
wealthy  are  in  mourning.  The  poor  man  is  full  of  joy.  Every  town 
says  "Let  us  suppress  the  powerful  among  us'' '.  'The  son  of  a  man  of 
rank  is  no  (longer)  distinguished  from  him  who  has  no  such  father'. 
'Those  who  were  clad  in  fine  linen  are  beaten.  Noble  ladies  suflfer  like 


DEMOCRACY     IN     DECLINE  241 

slave  girls'.  'All  female  slaves  are  free  with  their  tongues.  When  their 
mistress  speaks,  it  is  irksome  to  the  servants'.  'Princes  are  hungry  and 
in  distress'.  'Serfs  become  lords  of  serfs'.  'The  corn  of  Egypt  is  com- 
mon property'.  'The  chiefs  of  the  land  flee.  Noble  ladies  go  hungry'. 
'No  craftsman  works.  .  .  .'  This  is  certainly  a  fair  description  of  a 
revolution  and  the  sage  goes  on  to  describe  the  results.  'Plague  is 
throughout  the  land.  Blood  is  everywhere.  Death  is  not  lacking'.  The 
next  known  event  is  the  proclamation  of  Intef  or  Antef  of  Thebes 
as  the  first  king  of  the  Eleventh  Dynasty,  about  2160  b.c.^ 

In  ancient  Greece  the  examples  of  democracy  turning  into  dic- 
tatorship after  a  phase  of  socialism  were  so  numerous  that  the  Greek 
thinkers  felt  justified  in  regarding  that  sequence  as  almost  a  law  of 
nature.  In  ancient  Rome  the  episode  of  democracy  and  socialism  was 
relatively  brief  but  quite  recognisable.  It  is  only,  however,  of  modern 
times  that  we  have  such  full  information  as  to  be  quite  certain  what 
happened.  And  that  historical  experience  is  incomplete  in  the  sense 
that  it  is  still  going  on.  No  one  could  attempt  to  deduce  a  law  from 
what  is,  after  all,  only  a  single  example. 

But  one  aspect  of  quite  recent  experience  is  the  way  in  which  a 
democratic  government  may  lose  support  even  before  its  'levelling' 
policy  has  gone  very  far.  On  this  subject  Gopinath  Dhawan  is 
admirably  precise: 

In  recent  years  Parliamentary  Government  has  been  subjected  to 
severe  criticism.  Thus  the  system  of  elections;  the  slow-moving  pro- 
cedure; the  incapacity  of  the  system,  due  to  centralization  and  con- 
gestion of  business,  for  the  really  creative  work  of  social  and  economic 
planning;  the  dictatorship  of  the  cabinet;  the  increasing  power  of 
permanent  officials;  the  failure  of  the  system  to  induce  the  citizen  to 
participate  actively  in  political  life;  the  absence  of  approximate 
economic  equality — all  these  weak  points  have  been  assailed  by  many 
critics.  To  Gandhiji  [i.e.  Gandhi,  as  usually  spelt]  democracy  remains 
unachieved  more  on  account  of  the  prevailing  belief  in  the  efficacy  of 
violence  and  untruth  than  on  account  of  mere  institutional  inadequacy. 
Democracy  is  really  vitiated  by  the  wrong  ideas  and  ideals  that  move 
men." 

Impatience  with  democracy  had  become  fairly  general  before  a 
quarter  of  the  twentieth  century  had  passed.  Bernard  Shaw  describes 
how  real  socialism  had  been  frustrated  in  England  by  the  party  system 
and  by  universal  suffrage.  While  attributing  this  to  the  cunning  of 
Disraeli,  he  admits  that  things  were  no  better  in  Germany  or  France. 

...  As  nothing  parliamentary  happened  either  in  Germany  or  any- 
where else,  the  proletariat  became  more  and  more  disappointed  and 
disgusted    with    parliamentary    government    without    understanding 

'  The  Steppe  and  the  Sown.  H.  Peake  and  H.  J.  Fleure.  Oxford,  1928.  pp.  142-143. 
-  The  Political  Philosophy  of  Mahatma  Gandhi.  Gopinath  Dhawan.  Ahmedabad,  1951. 
p.  334. 


242  THE    EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

what  was  the  matter  with  it.  Anarchists,  Syndicahsts,  and  Guild 
Socialists,  crushed  by  Fabianism,  raised  their  heads  again  and  were 
able  to  shew  that  militant  city  mobs  were  more  feared  by  despots  than 
parliamentary  Labour  Parties  by  the  Capitalist  oligarchy.  Despotic 
dictators  came  into  fashion  as  fast  as  Lib-Lab  prime  ministers  lost 
face.  Peter  the  Great  building  a  new  capital  city  on  the  Neva;  Napoleon 
sweeping  out  Augean  stables,  breaking  rusty  chains,  draining  marshes, 
making  roads  for  world  traffic,  and  opening  a  career  to  the  talents  in 
a  blaze  of  revolutionary  glory;  his  nephew  Haussmanising  Paris  and 
Mussolini  rebuilding  Rome;  Primo  de  Rivera  and  Hitler  covering  their 
countries  with  up-to-date  roads,  were  contrasted  with  the  British 
parliament's  helpless  inability  to  build  a  bridge  over  the  Severn,  and 
the  impotence  of  Liebknecht  and  Bebel  under  the  heel  first  of  Bis- 
marck and  then  of  the  Kaiser.  No  parliament  could  either  abolish 
unemployment,  the  most  dreaded  affliction  of  the  proletariat,  or  treat 
the  unemployed  decently. . . .  Adolf  Hitler  and  Benito  Mussolini  found, 
as  Cromwell  had  found  before  them,  that  .  .  .  they  could  get  anything 
they  wanted  done,  and  sweep  all  parliamentary  recalcitrants  into  the 
dustbin,  alive  or  dead.  To  the  people  it  seemed  that  the  dictators  could 
fulfil  their  promises  if  they  would,  and  that  the  parliamentary  parties 
could  not  even  if  they  would.  No  wonder  the  plebiscites  always  gave 
the  dictators  majorities  of  ninety-five  per  cent  and  upwards.^ 

Gandhi,  the  more  profound  thinker,  says  plainly  that  democracy 
cannot  work  if  the  voter's  chief  aim  is  to  benefit  himself.  In  his  view 
(and  he  is  obviously  right)  no  good  can  come  of  the  violence  which  a 
state  confiscation  of  private  wealth  must  involve.  Bernard  Shaw  sees 
that  the  kind  of  socialism  he  wants  will  never  be  voted  by  any 
electorate  he  knows.  A  moderate  socialism,  in  fact,  with  the  voters 
seeking  a  secure  wage  and  no  responsibility  can  produce  only  Belloc's 
Servile  State.  Real  socialism,  on  the  other  hand,  brought  about  by  an 
extremist  group,  will  mean  violence,  and  violence  will  mean  dictator- 
ship. But  what  is  significant  about  Bernard  Shaw's  viewpoint  is  his 
admission  that  dictatorship,  when  it  comes,  is  actually  what  many 
people  want.  The  democracy  that  does  not  fail  through  socialist 
violence  fails  through  mere  incompetence;  and  through  an  incom- 
petence which  has  become  notorious,  public  and  meas-urable. 

It  has  been  suggested  on  an  earlier  page  (see  p.  173)  that  the 
defects  of  Athenian  democracy  appeared  in  the  disunion  produced 
by  socialist  measures;  in  public  finance;  and  in  external  affairs.  How 
far  does  recent  experience  confirm  the  view  that  democracy  is  liable 
to  fail  in  those  particular  directions?  It  would  be  a  study  in  itself  to 
analyse  the  history  of  European  democracy  since  1900,  and  further 
volumes  would  be  needed  to  cover  the  history  of  democracy  else- 
where. All  that  can  be  done  here  is  to  show  that  the  Athenian  defects 

'  Everybody's  Political  What's  What.  Bernard  Shaw.  London,  1944.  p.  263. 


DEMOCRACY     IN     DECLINE  243 

are  not  unknown  to-day;  which  is  not  the  same  thing  as  to  show  that 
they  are  universal. 

The  best  example  of  democratic  disunity  producing  disaster  is 
afforded  by  the  fall  of  France  in  1940.  Not  all  the  circumstances  of  the 
collapse  are  relevant  to  the  present  purpose  nor  were  all  its  causes 
even  political.  What  is  clear,  nevertheless,  is  that  the  French  were  so 
divided  among  themselves  that  their  military  effort  came  to  nothing. 
More  to  the  point,  they  quickly  produced  a  government  which  was 
virtually  collaborationist,  led  by  an  aged  general  whose  love  for 
France  was  less  perhaps  than  his  detestation  of  socialism  in  its 
French  form.  The  earlier  manifestations  of  disunity — Boulangism,  the 
anti-Dreyfus  agitation,  the  politics  of  the  Action  Frangaise — all 
foreshadowed  what  would  sooner  or  later  take  place.  Elsewhere  in 
the  world  believers  in  democracy  took  heart  from  the  triumph  of 
the  First  World  War.  But  the  French  had  been  defeated  in  that  war 
and  saved  only  by  their  allies.  Their  feeling  when  war  ended  was  not 
one  of  elation  but  of  dread.  Their  fear  of  German  revenge  was 
justified  by  events  but  it  produced  no  sort  of  unity.  French  society 
had  been  destroyed  in  successive  revolutions,  leaving  nothing  but 
left-wing  malcontents  whose  spiritual  home  was  in  Soviet  Russia  and 
right-wing  malcontents  whose  spiritual  home  was  in  Italy  or  Spain. 

From  Germany's  exit  from  the  League  of  Nations  in  October,  1933, 
a  sub-revolutionary  period  set  in  for  France.  Both  the  Italo-Abys- 
sinian  War  and  the  Spanish  Civil  War  tore  the  tissue  of  France's 
national  opinion  to  shreds,  set  all  antagonisms  ablaze  and  produced 
the  well-known  historical  phenomenon  of  some  Conservatives' 
preference  for  a  foreign  invader  to  the  victory  of  the  progressive 
social  forces  in  his  own  country.  .  .  } 

The  French  armies  did  not  fight;  they  disintegrated.  Nor  is  their  any 
sign  of  recovered  unity  since  1945.  As  a  world  power  France  no 
longer  exists. 

For  an  example  of  the  dangers  of  democratic  finance  we  need  go 
no  further  than  England.  And  yet  the  tendency  to  build  up  an 
enormous  civil  service,  such  as  existed  at  Athens,  is  universal  and  not 
even  directly  connected  with  democracy.  What  is  distinctively  demo- 
cratic is  the  force  which  prevents  any  reduction  in  the  establishment 
which  has  been  built  up.  The  increase  in  itself  is  due  to  a  law  of 
growth  which  affects  every  administrative  office;  a  law  which  has  yet 
to  be  fully  investigated,  the  workings  of  which  are  manifest  although 
not  yet  reduced  to  a  satisfactory  formula.  The  obvious  fact  is  that 
anyone  appointing  an  administrator  to  do  a  certain  continuing  task, 
assisted  by  two  clerks,  will  find  (after  two  or  three  years)  that  the 
original  official  is  now  assisted  by  two  others,  dividing  the  work 
between  them,  and  each  of  these  aided  in  turn  by  two  clerks.  A  year 

*  The  Future  of  Government.  H.  Finer.  London,  1946.  p.  80. 


244  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

or  two  later  the  official  first  appointed  will  need  a  higher  salary  in 
order  to  control  two  sub-departments,  each  of  which  will  comprise  a 
head  and  two  or  more  assistants,  each  again  with  clerks  to  assist  him. 
By  then  there  will  have  to  be  an  establishment  officer  in  addition,  to 
deal  with  problems  of  emoluments  and  leave.  So  much  is  common 
knowledge.  What  is  less  widely  realised  is  that  the  increase  in  staff  is 
governed  by  a  law  of  growth  which  is  not  related  in  any  way  to  the 
amount  of  work  to  be  done.^  The  volume  of  outside  correspondence 
may  be  constant,  it  may  have  diminished;  it  may  even  have  increased. 
But  the  staff  will  multiply  in  any  case  and  at  approximately  the  same 
speed,  all  working  as  hard  as  (and  some  working  harder  than)  before. 
In  a  commercial  concern  this  process  will  not  continue  unchecked  for 
ever  and  may  be  reversed  promptly  in  a  period  of  slump.  Under  a 
monarchy  the  process  may  be  undone  when  the  king  wants  the 
money  for  something  else,  if  only  for  a  new  mistress.  But  no  one 
can  reduce  the  civil  service  in  a  democracy.  No  one  can  economise  on 
staff  in  a  nationalised  industry.  To  do  so  would  be  to  lose  votes  on  a 
big  scale.  There  is  hardly  a  modern  state  not  grossly  overburdened 
with  unproductive  clerks  and  officials,  and  Britain  perhaps  as  over- 
burdened as  any.  But  there  is  no  remedy  for  it  under  a  democratic 
form  of  rule. 

Lastly,  there  is  the  question  of  foreign  and  colonial  policy.  So  far 
as  Great  Britain  is  concerned,  it  must  be  remembered  that  democratic 
measures  were  for  long  introduced  by  aristocratic  men.  No  revolution 
came  to  break  the  older  traditions  and  the  process  of  democratic 
dilution  has  not  been  completed  even  yet.  Even  after  Lloyd  George 
began  to  found  the  Welfare  State,  diplomacy  and  the  armed  services 
remained  in  aristocratic  hands — so  much  so  that  there  were  fears  of 
armed  revolt  over  Ulster  in  1914.  The  result  was  that  the  diplomatic 
preparation  for  the  First  World  War  was  admirable.  It  was  conducted, 
that  is  to  say,  solely  with  regard  to  national  interests.  There  was  little 
confusion  about  ideological  aims.  It  took  even  longer  for  democracy 
to  affect  the  Army  and  Navy,  both  remaining  under  more  or  less 
aristocratic  leadership  throughout  and  after  the  Second  World  War. 
To  judge  the  effectiveness  of  democratic  foreign  policy  we  must  turn 
to  the  British  record  between  1916  and  1940.  Of  democratic  war 
leadership  there  is  as  yet  no  British  example  at  all.  All  that  can  be 
noted  on  that  score  is  that  the  British  turned  with  relief  to  an  aristo- 
cratic leader  in  1940,  leaving  the  direction  of  the  war  thereafter  to 
him  and  to  senior  officers  who  equally  dated  from  the  old  regime. 
The  results  of  throwing  the  services  open  to  talent  cannot  be  known 
until  another  decade  has  passed.  We  know,  in  the  meanwhile,  that  the 
age  of  Pericles  is  over. 

'  See  The  Economist,  Nov.  19th,  1955. 


DEMOCRACY     IN     DECLINE  245 

Would  it  be  fair  to  say  that  British  foreign  policy  in  1916-1940 
reproduced  all  the  Athenian  mistakes?  That  the  foreign  policy  itself 
was  all  but  suicidal  is  obvious  from  the  facts,  in  1914  Britain  faced  up 
to  the  German  aggressor  in  firm  alliance  with  Russia,  France  and 
Japan,  thereafter  obtaining  the  alliance  of  Italy,  Roumania,  China 
and  the  United  States.  Diplomatically  outmanoeuvred,  the  Kaiser 
had  Austria,  Turkey  and  Bulgaria  as  his  only  allies.  In  1939,  by 
contrast,  Britain  went  to  war  against  the  same  aggressor  with  France 
and  Poland  as  her  only  allies.  Germany  was  then  in  alliance  with 
Austria  and  other  satellite  countries  and  enjoyed,  in  addition,  a 
diplomatic  understanding  with  Italy,  Spain,  Japan  and  Russia.  As 
against  that,  Great  Britain  had  no  understanding  with  the  United 
States,  which  in  fact  remained  neutral  until  attacked.  Nor  was  this 
all.  For  there  was  actually  a  moment  in  1939-40  when  Great  Britain, 
already  at  war  with  Germany  and  still  unaided  by  the  United  States, 
was  actually  aiding  Finland  against  Russia  with  every  likelihood  of 
having  in  consequence  to  fight  the  Russians  as  well.  As  it  proved  no 
easy  task,  in  the  end,  for  Great  Britain,  Russia  and  the  United  States 
to  defeat  Germany  by  their  combined  efforts,  an  attempt  by  Great 
Britain  to  fight  both  Germany  and  Russia,  and  without  American 
help,  would  have  been  magnificent.  But  is  that  war?  More  to  the 
point,  is  that  foreign  policy?  Disraeli  had  uttered  a  specific  warning 
that,  under  a  democracy  'You  will  in  due  season  have  wars  entered 
into  from  passion,  and  not  from  reason'.^  On  the  face  of  it,  the  failure 
of  British  foreign  policy  would  seem  to  have  been  complete. 

It  is  not  enough,  however,  for  our  present  purpose,  to  show  that 
British  foreign  policy  had  failed,  even  though  the  fact  is  beyond  dis- 
pute. We  have  to  show  that  it  failed  through  being  democratic. 
Mistakes  in  foreign  policy  are  not  confined  to  democracies,  as  the 
Kaiser  proved  in  1914.  What  we  have  to  ascertain  is  whether  the 
mistakes  made  were  of  a  kind  to  which  democracies  are  peculiarly 
liable.  Were  they  brought  about,  in  fact,  by  the  pressure  of  public 
opinion?  Or  were  the  disasters  due  to  circumstances  unrelated  to  any 
form  of  rule?  In  considering  this  question  the  basic  fact  to  realise  is 
that  the  British  Empire  began  to  disintegrate  in  1921.  A  result  of  the 
Washington  Conference  was  to  weaken,  not  only  the  Royal  Navy  but 
the  entire  British  position  in  the  Far  East.  This  was  the  first  step  in  a 
process  which  was  to  involve  the  loss  of  India.  Behind  this  process 
was  the  realisation  in  Britain  that  a  democracy  has  no  right  to  govern 
an  empire.  British  voters  could  not  logically  deny  to  the  Hindoos  the 
political  privileges  they  claimed  for  themselves.  When,  moreover,  the 
British  forgot  the  weakness  of  their  moral  position  the  Americans 
were  always  quick  to  remind  them  of  it;  being  in  fact  (as  it  happened) 

'  See  above,  p.  225. 


246  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

less  sensitive  about  American  imperialism  than  British.  As  a  back- 
ground, therefore,  to  British  foreign  policy  was  the  weakening  of  the 
Empire  generally  and  the  steady  deterioration  of  the  position  in  the 
Far  East;  due  in  part  to  American  pressure  but  also  in  part  to  the 
moral  sentiments  of  the  British  voters  whose  sentiments  joined 
happily  with  their  preference,  for  the  money  saved  on  warships 
could  be  (and  was)  spent  on  social  benefits  for  themselves. 

While  it  may  be  admitted,  however,  that  the  disintegration  of  the 
Empire  (or  the  beginnings  of  it)  made  the  statesman's  task  more 
difficult,  it  could  be  urged  that  the  moral  position  of  Britain  was  an 
asset  and  that  the  purity  of  British  motives  would  make  friends  to 
take  the  place  of  subjects.  No  true  democrat  could  accept  it  as  a  valid 
criticism  of  British  policy  that  the  principles  of  freedom  were  allowed 
to  prevail  in  the  Empire  over  mere  principles  of  strategy.  So  that  it  is 
to  foreign  policy  in  the  narrower  sense  that  we  must  look  for  proof  of 
democratic  weakness.  There  are  three  aspects  of  this  which  seem 
worthy  of  study;  the  methods  used,  .the  aims  in  view  and  the  specific 
results.  As  regards  the  methods  there  can  be  few  better  witnesses  than 
Sir  Harold  Nicolson,  who  writes: 

The  essential  defect  of  democratic  policy  can  be  defined  in  one  word, 
namely  'irresponsibility'.  Under  a  monarchic  or  ohgarchic  system  the 
'sovereign'  who  enters  into  a  contract  with  some  foreign  State  feels 
himself  personally  'responsible'  for  the  execution  of  that  contract.  For 
a  monarch  or  a  governing  class  to  repudiate  a  formal  treaty  was 
regarded  as  a  dishonourable  thing  to  do,  and  would  have  aroused 
much  criticism  both  at  home  and  abroad.  Now,  however,  that  the 
people  are  'sovereign',  this  sense  of  individual  or  corporate  respon- 
sibility no  longer  exists.  The  people  are  in  no  sense  aware  of  their  own 
sovereignty  in  foreign  affairs  and  have  therefore  no  sense  of  responsi- 
bility in  regard  to  treaties  or  conventions  entered  into  with  other 
Powers,  even  when  they  have  themselves,  through  their  elected  rep- 
resentatives, approved  of  those  treaties.  They  are  honestly  under  the 
impression  that  their  own  word  has  not  been  pledged  and  that  they 
are  therefore  fully  entitled  to  repudiate  engagements  which  they  may 
subsequently  feel  to  be  onerous  or  inconvenient.  .  .  .^ 

This  might  seem  exaggerated  but  it  is  more  than  borne  out  by  the 
facts. 

The  chief  asset  with  which  the  Labour  party  approached  the  conduct 
of  British  foreign  policy  was  that  it  had  no  past  to  be  ashamed  of  and 
no  heritage  to  live  down.  It  had  played  no  part  in  the  secret  diplomacy 
preceding  the  war  or  in  the  peace  settlement.  ...  It  had  no  responsi- 
bility for  the  blockade  or  the  armed  intervention  against  Soviet  Russia. 
It  had,  in  opposition,  denounced  these  policies  and  proclaimed  that  it 
would  never  be  bound,  as  a  government,  by  secret  treaties  or  arrange- 

'  Ciirzon,  the  last  phase.  1919-1925.  H.  Nicolson.  London,  1934.  p.  391. 


DEMOCRACY     IN     DECLINE  247 

ments  with  foreign  nations  which  it  might  find  in  existence  when  it 
assumed  power.  Its  advocacy  of  a  just  peace  and  its  insistence  upon 
the  reconciliation  of  the  victors  and  the  vanquished  had  an  immense 
appeal  to  a  world  divided  by  hostility  and  suspicion.  It  was  on  such  a 
basis  that  Labour  was  prepared  to  inaugurate  a  new  era  of  international 
good  will  and  co-operation.^ 

It  is  not  obvious,  at  first  sight,  why  a  refusal  to  abide  by  earlier  agree- 
ments (if  only  secret  ones)  should  in  itself  banish  suspicion  or  attract 
goodwill.  Even,  however,  if  it  did,  the  principle  here  upheld  seems  to 
combine  idealism  and  duplicity  in  a  way  which  foreign  governments 
might  eventually  find  confusing.  In  comparing  this  new  type  of 
diplomacy  with  that  prevalent  before  1914,  Sir  Harold  Nicolson 
points  out  where  the  danger  lies: — 

The  main  distinction,  therefore,  between  the  methods  of  the  new  and 
those  of  the  old  diplomacy  is  that  the  former  aims  at  satisfying  the 
immediate  wishes  of  the  electorate,  whereas  the  latter  was  concerned 
only  with  the  ultimate  interests  of  the  nation.  It  is,  very  largely,  a 
difference  in  the  time  available.  The  old  diplomatist,  negotiating  as  an 
expert  with  fellow  experts,  was  able  to  approach  his  problems  in  a 
scientific  spirit,  with  due  deliberation,  and  without  regard  to  im- 
mediate popular  support.  Such  a  system  was  obviously  open  to  abuse 
and  danger.  Yet  democratic  diplomacy  is  exposed  to  its  own  peculiar 
maladies  which,  in  that  they  are  less  apparent,  are  even  more  insidious. 
In  its  desire  to  conciliate  popular  feeling  it  is  apt  to  subordinate 
principle  to  expediency,  to  substitute  the  indefinite  for  the  precise,  to 
prefer  in  place  of  the  central  problem  (which  is  often  momentarily 
insoluble)  subsidiary  issues  upon  which  immediate  agreement,  and 
therefore  immediate  popular  approval,  can  be  attained.- 

This  is  the  other  aspect  of  open  diplomacy  as  conceived  by  the 
Labour  Party.  But  Sir  Winston  Churchill  makes  it  plain  that  no  one 
political  party  was  responsible. 

.  .  .  Delight  in  smooth-sounding  platitudes,  refusal  to  face  unpleasant 
facts,  desire  for  popularity  and  electoral  success  irrespective  of  the 
vital  interests  of  the  State,  genuine  love  of  peace  and  pathetic  belief 
that  love  can  be  its  sole  foundation,  obvious  lack  of  intellectual  vigour 
in  both  leaders  of  the  British  Coalition  Government .  .  .  the  strong  and 
violent  pacifism  which  at  this  time  dominated  the  Labour-Socialist 
Party,  the  utter  devotion  of  the  Liberals  to  sentiment  apart  from  reality 
.  .  .  the  whole  supported  by  overwhelming  majorities  in  both  Houses 
of  Parliament:  all  these  constituted  a  picture  of  British  fatuity  and 
fecklessness  which,  though  devoid  of  guile,  was  not  devoid  of  guilt, 
and,  though  free  from  wickedness  or  evil  design,  played  a  definite  part 
in  the  unleashing  upon  the  world  of  horrors  and  miseries  which,  even 

'  British  Labour^ s  Foreign  Policy.  Elaine  Windrich.  Stanford,  California,  1952.  p.  32. 
"  Nicolson.  op.  cit.  pp.  185-186. 


248  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

SO  far  as  they  have  unfolded,  are  already  beyond  comparison  in  human 
experience.^ 

These  are  grave  words  and  written  by  one  who,  perhaps  beyond 
any  other,  is  in  a  position  to  know  the  facts. 

So  much  for  the  methods.  What  of  the  aims?  In  dealing  with  these 
it  becomes  necessary  to  ignore  the  period  before  1933.  It  was  an 
epoch,  for  the  democratic  states,  of  a  rather  unpractical  idealism, 
exemplified  (to  take  one  instance)  by  the  Kellogg  Pact  of  1928,  which 
either  meant  the  millenium  had  come  or  else  meant  nothing  at  all.  By 
1933,  however  (or  at  latest  by  1934)  the  'disarmament'  period  was 
over  and  Adolf  Hitler  was  already  in  power.  Thenceforward  it  be- 
comes more  possible  to  discover  what  the  Britishaimsweresupposedto 
be.  One  principle  of  British  foreign  policy  has  always  been  to  oppose 
whatever  Power  threatens  to  become  dominant  in  Europe.  By  1934 
that  Power  was,  for  the  second  time,  Germany.  To  keep  Germany  in 
its  place  an  alliance  was  needed  of  Great  Britain  and  France  with 
Russia  or  Italy  or  both.  Nor  was  this  theoretically  impossible. 
Hitler's  hatred  of  Russia  was  known.  Mussolini's  anxiety  to  maintain 
Austrian  independence  was  known.  But  such  an  alliance  required, 
to  begin  with,  the  strong  and  consistent  support  of  Great  Britain  and 
France.  And  French  policy  was  not  even  consistent  with  itself.  On 
the  one  hand,  France  had  made  alliance  with  Czechoslovakia, 
Yugoslavia  and  Roumania.  On  the  other  hand,  the  money  which 
should  have  been  spent  on  mobile  forces  (if  the  French  alliance  was 
to  help  the  Czechs)  was  spent  from  1930  on  the  static  defences  of  the 
Maginot  Line.  These  defences,  if  completed,  might  or  might  not  have 
saved  France:  they  could  not  have  saved  the  Little  Entente.  Great 
Britain  was  filled,  by  contrast,  with  high-minded  people  who  at  the 
same  time  denounced  Germany,  denounced  Italy  and  opposed  re- 
armament. 

When  a  feeble  government  proposed  to  strengthen  the  Royal  Air 
Force  in  July,  1934,  the  Labour  and  Liberal  Parties  moved  a  vote  of 
censure.  Mr.  Attlee  denied  the  need  for  more  aircraft  and  denied  that 
greater  strength  would  make  for  peace.  Mr.  Winston  Churchill 
reminded  the  house  that  'our  weakness  does  not  only  involve  our- 
selves; our  weakness  involves  also  the  stability  of  Europe'.  He  also 
pointed  out  that  the  Labour  and  Liberal  parties  and  press  were 
foremost  in  abuse  of  Germany. 

.  .  .  But  these  criticisms  are  fiercely  resented  by  the  powerful  men  who 
have  Germany  in  their  hands.  So  that  we  are  to  disarm  our  friends,  we 
are  to  have  no  allies,  we  are  to  affront  powerful  nations,  and  we  are  to 
neglect  our  own  defences  entirely.  That  is  a  miserable  and  perilous 
situation. - 

'  The  Second  World  [Var.  Winston  S.  Churchill.  Vol.  \.  pp.  69-70. 
^  Churchill,  op.  cit.  Vol.  I.  pp.  92-93. 


DEMOCRACY     IN     DECLINE  249 

It  was  to  become  more  perilous  still.  For  Italy,  seeing  that  there  was 
nothing  to  fear  from  France  or  Britain,  invaded  Abyssinia  in  1935 
and  drove  high-minded  Englishmen  into  still  more  startling  incon- 
sistency. Mr.  Attlee  demanded  'effective  sanctions,  effectively  applied' 
against  Italy,  while  maintaining  that  'We  think  that  you  have  to  go 
forward  to  disarmament.  .  .  .'  Earlier  in  the  same  year  the  League  of 
Nations  Union  had  organised  a  Peace  Ballot  in  which  over  ten 
million  people  by  demanding  reduction  of  armaments,  gave  a  mis- 
leading impression  of  their  views  to  the  rest  of  the  world. ^  Mussolini, 
thinking  the  British  negligible,  decided  to  look  for  friends  elsewhere. 
At  this  stage  there  was  something  to  be  said  for  conciliating  him  as 
Hoare  and  Laval  wanted  to  do;  and  more  for  sinking  the  Italian  fleet 
as  others  would  have  preferred;  but  the  policy  chosen  combined  all 
that  was  dangerous  in  either  alternative.  Next  year,  in  1936,  the 
Spanish  Civil  War,  in  which  a  now  hostile  Italy  was  involved,  offered 
a  splendid  opportunity  for  an  agreement  with  Russia.  The  chance 
was  missed  and  the  end  of  the  war  found  Britain  on  bad  terms  with 
Germany,  Italy,  Russia  and,  for  that  matter,  Spain. 
Throughout  this  period,  however,  of  recurring  crises,  Britain  and 
France  had  one  loyal  ally,  not  a  great  power  but  a  firm  friend,  and 
that  was  Czechoslovakia.  At  Munich  in  1938  that  one  ally  was 
abandoned,  betrayed  by  France  with  British  connivance  and  despite 
the  protest  of  Russia.  Churchill  denied  at  the  time  'that  security  can 
be  obtained  by  throwing  a  small  State  to  the  wolves'-  but  that  was 
exactly  what  Chamberlain  had  agreed  to  do.  By  snubbing  Russia  he 
played  into  Hitler's  hands,  preparing  the  way  for  the  later  agreement 
between  Russia  and  Germany.  By  sacrificing  Czechoslovakia  he 
demonstrated  just  what  the  Franco-British  alliance  was  worth  to  any 
other  potential  ally.  By  the  same  act  he  threw  away  the  Czech  Army 
and  the  Skoda  armaments  factory.  He  threw  away,  finally,  a  year; 
delaying  the  inevitable  war  by  a  period  during  which  German  strength 
increased  far  more  rapidly  than  British.^  Having  done  this.  Chamber- 
lain returned  to  have  his  policy  endorsed  by  an  overwhelming  majority 
in  the  House''  and  by  a  still  larger  majority  of  the  British  public. 

It  is  not  to  our  present  purpose  to  draw  up  an  indictment  of  indi- 
viduals or  political  parties.  The  object  is  merely  to  show  that  one 
leading  principle  of  British  foreign  policy — a  principle  firmly  adhered 
to  throughout  most  of  three  centuries — a  principle  vindicated  afresh 
in  1914 — was  reversed  during  the  period  from  1933  to  1939.  It  was 
reversed  by  a  democratically  elected  government,  reversed  with 
popular  approval,  reversed  with  the  full  consent  of  Parliament.  This 

'  'Its  name  overshadowed  its  purpose'.  Churchill,  op.  cit.  Vol.  I.  p.  232. 

'  Churchill,  op.  cit.  p.  238. 

'  See  Churchill,  op.  cit.  pp.  262-265. 

'  By  366  votes  to  144. 


250  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

principle  is  only  one  of  several.  It  is  chosen  for  illustration  here  be- 
cause it  exemplifies  the  specific  dangers  of  democratic  rule;  the  re- 
fusal to  abide  by  agreements,  the  refusal  to  pay  for  defence,  the  ready 
betrayal  of  allies  and  the  failure  to  combine  with  others  against  a 
common  danger.  Said  Disraeli  'you  will  in  due  season  submit  to  peace 
ignominiously  sought  and  ignominiously  obtained'  and  events  were 
to  justify  his  prophecy.  Democrats  have  claimed  that  the  will  of  the 
people  is  always  right.  But  can  it  be  the  will  of  a  people  to  prepare 
their  own  destruction? 


CHAPTER   XX 

The  Caudillos 


DICTATORSHIP  is  the  natural  sequel  to  the  anarchy  which 
results,  very  often,  from  the  collapse  of  democratic  rule. 
Dictatorship  is  usually,  however,  by  its  nature  a  short-lived  experi- 
ment, limited  to  a  single  lifetime  and  giving  way  to  another  form  of 
rule.  Were  we  to  judge  from  the  history  of  dictatorships  in  the  ancient 
world,  we  should  conclude  that  the  dictator  is  raised  to  his  pedestal 
by  fairly  general  consent.  Once  there,  he  cannot  descend  for  fear  of 
his  enemies;  nor  do  others  want  him  to  descend,  for  fear  of  renewed 
confusion.  So  he  remains  in  power  until  his  death,  not  necessarily 
attributable  to  old  age.  There  is  a  marked  tendency  for  dictatorship 
to  turn  into  monarchy,  and  this  trend  appears  again  in  modern 
history.  The  career  of  Oliver  Cromwell  is  thus  very  true  to  pattern. 
Towards  the  end  of  his  life  it  was  obvious  that  monarchy  had  to  be 
revived,  whether  with  Cromwell  as  king  or  under  Charles  II  restored. 
There  was  a  phase  of  doubt  as  to  who  the  king  should  be  but  none 
about  the  need  for  monarchy  as  such.  And  just  as  Cromwell  prepared 
the  way  for  Charles  II,  so  did  Napoleon  prepare  the  way  for  Louis 
XVI 1 1.  His  intention  was  to  found  a  new  dynasty  but,  failing  in  that, 
he  merely  ensured  the  restoration  of  the  old.  There  is  much  evidence, 
in  fact,  to  suggest  that  dictatorship  is  likely  to  be  only  a  temporary 
expedient  in  a  State  with  any  tradition  of  unity.  Dictatorship  as  a 
recurrent  pattern  of  rule  would  seem  more  characteristic  of  States  in 
which  no  such  unity  exists  and  in  which  monarchy  is,  for  some 
reason,  difficult  to  establish. 

\  All  modern  dictatorship  owes  its  inspiration  to  Simon  Bolivar  and, 
through  him,  to  Napoleon.  It  is  to  South  America  that  we  must  look, 
in  the  first  instance,  for  dictatorship  introduced  and  perpetuated  as 
an  admitted  necessity;  defended  by  thinkers  of  integrity  and  seen  by 
historians  as  a  positive  good.  This  attitude  towards  dictatorship 
must  be  understood,  however,  in  relation  to  its  geographical  and 
economic  setting.  South  America  has  offered  to  its  rulers  a  political 
problem  which  was  initially  almost  insoluble.  The  continent  is  vast, 
largely  tropical  and  jungle-covered,  climatically  exhausting  to  the 
immigrant,  broken  by  mountains  and  periodically  afflicted  by 
hurricanes,  earthquakes  and  floods.  Its  original  Inca  and  Aztec  rulers 
had  been  able,  nevertheless,  to  organise  the  stable  monarchies  which 

251 


252  THE    EVOLUTION     OF    POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

the  Spaniards  found  there  in  about  1500.  Some  three  centuries  of 
Spanish  colonial  rule  reduced  the  Indian  population  from  perhaps 
twenty-five  million  to  about  nine  million  in  the  early  nineteenth 
century.  By  the  same  period  the  Creole  white  or  semi-white  population 
amounted  to  five  million,  thinly  spread  over  an  enormous  territory. 
The  Spanish  social  and  political  structure  was  aristocratic,  all  power 
being  vested  in  the  officials  and  higher  clergy  from  Spain  and  the 
resident  horse-riding  landowners  of  Spanish  descent.  These  ruled 
over  a  listless  and  improvident  population  of  serfs  and  slaves.  There 
was  little  or  no  middle  class  because  of  the  rigid  commercial  restric- 
tions which  monopolised  some  trades  and  forbade  others.  Of  intel- 
lectual activity  there  was  very  little  sign. 

If  some  South  American  handicaps  were  attributable  to  nature, 
others  were  certainly  attributable  to  Spain. 

Spanish  America  received  a  poor  heritage  from  the  mother  country: 
a  class  system,  little  experience  in  self-government,  a  wealthy,  powerful 
and  intolerant  established  church,  intellectual  repression,  and  a  poor, 
illiterate  and  superstitious  population.  .  .  .^ 

Upon  this  practically  medieval  world  there  burst  suddenly  the 
potent  ideas  of  nationality,  independence,  secularism,  democracy 
and  freedom.  The  Creoles  were  to  experience  the  Reformation,  the 
American  War  of  Independence  and  the  French  Revolution.  They 
were  to  experience  them,  moreover,  at  the  same  time,  adding  (for  the 
sake  of  variety)  some  scenes  borrowed  from  the  Wars  of  the  Roses 
and  others  from  the  America  of  Bulfalo  Bill.  Theirs  was  a  history  in 
which  St.  Dominic,  Don  Quixote,  Garibaldi,  John  of  Gaunt  and  Al 
Capone  were  all  contemporaries  and  at  variance  with  each  other. 
Their  swiftly-moving  drama  passed  abruptly  from  the  cloister  to  the 
wild-west  saloon,  from  the  world  of  Francis  Drake  to  the  world  of 
Jeremy  Bentham.  Nor  was  their  confusion  merely  of  the  mind.  Their 
wars  of  liberation  lasted  fourteen  years,  leaving  three  million 
exhausted  and  impoverished  Creoles,  free  now  from  Spanish  rule,  to 
govern  themselves  as  well  as  they  might.  They  were  full  of  new  ideas 
but  without  experience  of  administration.  They  were  full  of  noble 
aspirations  but  had  no  money  at  all. 

From  the  confused  story  of  the  Wars  of  Liberation  there  emerges 
the  one  great  reputation;  that  of  Simon  Bolivar.  He  was  of  aristo- 
cratic birth,  brought  up  at  Caracas  in  the  Vice-Royalty  of  New 
Granada. 

If  he  had  not  been  a  great  horseman,  he  would  never  have  reached 
his  goal,  would  never  have  held  his  own  in  battle,  on  mountain  paths 
and  mountain  passes,  and,  in  spite  of  all  the  noble  feelings  which  later 
moved  him  to  ever-greater  deeds  of  daring,  would  never  have  become 

'  Historic  Evolution  of  Hispanic  America.  J.  Fred  Rippy.  New  York,  1932.  p.  336. 


THE     CAUDILLOS  253 

a  man  of  action.  A  horseman,  and  only  a  horseman,  could  become  the 
liberator  of  the  plains  and  mountains  of  South  America.^ 

_[His  education,  begun  in  South  America,  was  continued  in  Spain 
(1800-1801)  and  later  in  the  France  of  the  Consulate.  He  admired 
Napoleon  as  a  soldier,  as  the  hero  of  the  Republic,  as  the  genius  of 
freedom.  He  had  no  use  for  him  as  Emperor  and  would  not  even 
attend  the  coronation,  considering  him  from  that  moment  a  tyrant 
and  a  bar  to  progress.  His  education  was  completed  in  Milan  and 
Rome,  where  he  probably  met  Lamartine,  Madame  de  Stael, 
Chateaubriand  and  (possibly)  Lord  Byron.  He  returned  to  South 
America  at  the  age  of  twenty-three,  having  read  widely  and  met  many 
of  the  distinguished  men  and  women  of  the  day.  He  was  familiar 
with  the  works  of  Spinoza,  Rousseau,  Montesquieu,  Machiavelli, 
Voltaire  and  Hobbes.  Returning  to  his  ancestral  home,  he  was  there 
when  the  news  arrived  of  Napoleon's  conquest  of  Spain.  Venezuela 
was  declared  an  independent  state  in  1810.  Bolivar's  military  career 
began  soon  afterwards  and  in  1812  he  set  out,  with  five  hundred  men, 
to  liberate  South  America  from  all  that  remained  of  Spanish  rule. 

Most  of  what  followed  is  not  to  the  present  purpose.  What  is 
significant  is  his  answer  to  the  problem  created  by  his  military  success. 
How  was  South  America  to  be  governed?  He  dreamt  at  one  time  of  a 
united  continent,  even  of  the  two  Americas  forming  a  single  state 
with  a  capital  at  the  Isthmus  of  Panama.  This  was  fantasy.  When  he 
liberated  Venezuela,  however,  he  proclaimed  it  a  republic  and 
summoned  a  Congress  at  Angostura.  His  opening  speech  to  the 
delegates  has  survived  and  is  proof  of  the  close  attention  he  had  paid 
to  political  theory. 

.  .  .  Nature  endows  us  with  the  desire  for  freedom  at  our  birth,  yet  men, 
whether  from  apathy  or  inborn  inclination,  suffer  the  chains  laid  upon 
them.  It  is  a  terrible  truth  that  it  costs  more  strength  to  maintain 
freedom  than  to  endure  the  weight  of  tyranny.  Many  nations,  past  and 
present,  have  borne  that  yoke;  few  have  made  use  of  the  happy 
moments  of  freedom  and  have  preferred  to  relapse  with  all  speed  into 
their  errors.  For  it  is  people  rather  than  systems  which  lead  to  tyranny. 
The  habit  of  subjection  makes  them  less  susceptible  to  the  beauty  of 
honour  and  progress,  and  they  look  unmoved  on  the  glory  of  living  in 
liberty  under  self-made  laws.  But  are  there  any  democratic  govern- 
ments which  have  combined  power,  prosperity  and  long  life?  Was  it 
not  rather  aristocracy  and  monarchy  which  created  the  great  and 
durable  empires?  Is  there  any  empire  older  than  China?  What 
republic  ever  lasted  longer  than  Sparta  or  Venice?  Did  the  Roman 
Empire  not  conquer  the  world  and  the  French  monarchy  last  for 
fourteen  hundred  years  ?^ 

'  Bolivar,  the  life  of  on  Idealist.  Emil  Ludwig.  Trans,  by  M.  H.  Lindsay.  London,  1947. 
'  Ludwig.  op.  cit.  pp.  149-50. 


254  THE    EVOLUTION     OF    POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

Bolivar  became  President  under  the  new  constitution  of  a  State  in 
which  his  military  power  was  already  supreme.  He  saw  himself  as 
'a  predestined  man'  and  added  'The  man  is  a  fool  who  mistakes  the 
blessings  which  Providence  pours  on  his  head.  At  this  very  moment 
we  are  beloved  of  God  and  must  not  leave  His  gifts  unused!'^ 

After  an  absence  of  five  years,  Bolivar  returned  to  Colombia  to 
find  it  torn  by  intrigues,  some  wanting  to  make  him  king,  some 
wanting  to  depose  him  altogether.  He  replied  in  public: 

'The  voice  of  the  nation  has  forced  supreme  power  upon  me.  1  shall 
abhor  that  office  to  my  dying  day,  for  it  is  the  cause  of  suspicion  that  I 
am  aiming  at  the  crown.  Who  can  imagine  me  so  blinded  that  I  could 
desire  to  descend!  Do  these  men  not  know  that  the  name  of  Libertador 
is  more  glorious  than  any  throne?  Colombians!  I  have  once  more 
taken  the  yoke  upon  me,  for  in  time  of  danger  it  would  be  hypocrisy, 
not  modesty,  to  shirk  it.  But  if  my  action  means  anything  else  than  that 
I  wish  to  safeguard  the  rights  of  the  people,  let  no  man  count  on  me!'^ 

He  wrote,  however,  to  Paez: 

I  am  weary  of  this  way  of  life  and  desire  nothing  but  my  release.  I 
tremble  lest  I  may  descend  from  the  heights  to  which  fortune  has 
raised  my  name.  I  never  wished  for  power.  It  used  to  oppress  me;  now 
it  is  killing  me.  But  Columbia  moves  my  heart.  I  see  our  work  being 
destroyed  and  future  centuries  passing  verdict  upon  us  as  the  culprits. 
That  is  why  I  remain  in  the  place  to  which  the  voice  of  the  people  has 
called  me.  .  .  .^ 

Not  only  did  he  remain  in  that  position.  He  came  to  see  that  a 
dictatorship  was  needed  and  that  the  constitution  must,  if  necessary, 
be  ignored.  He  wrote  in  that  sense  to  Santander. 

The  dictatorship  must  bring  a  total  reform  with  it.  Our  organization 
is  an  excess  of  ill-applied  power,  and  hence  harmful.  You  know  that  I 
find  administration,  sedentary  work,  tedious.  Dictatorship  is  in  vogue; 
it  will  be  popular.  The  soldiers  want  coercion  and  the  people  pro- 
vincial independence.  In  such  confusion,  a  dictatorship  unites  the 
whole.  If  the  nation  would  authorize  me,  I  could  do  everything.  You 
speak  of  a  monarchy  .  .  .  am  I  now  to  descend  to  a  throne?  Your  letter 
hurts  me.  If  you  want  to  see  me  again,  never  speak  again  of  a  crown.* 

Bolivar  was  dictator  of  Colombia  for  eighteen  months,  'the 
supreme  leader  chosen  by  the  people,  but  neither  a  tyrant  nor  a 
despot'.  He  saw  clearly  what  had  to  be  done  but  also  saw  that  'there 
is  one  great  difficulty  in  our  way'.  'Colombia'  he  wrote,  'is  perishing 
because  its  leader  is  not  ambitious  enough'.  He  had  too  little  love  of 
power,  too  great  a  dislike  of  tyranny.  When  the  last  Spaniards  had 

'  Ludwig.  op.  cit.  p.  176. 
^  Ibid.  p.  256. 
■■'  Ibkl.  pp.  257-258. 
'  Ibid.  p.  262. 


THE     CAUDILLOS  255 

been  driven  from  South  America,  the  liberated  repubhcs  fell  into 
confusion,  fighting  each  other  and  fighting  within  themselves. 
Bolivar  narrowly  escaped  assassination  and  listened  afresh  to  those 
who  urged  importing  royalty  from  Europe.  He  decided  that  it  was 
impossible. 

Who  is  there  to  become  King  of  Colombia?  No  prince  will  come 
from  abroad  to  take  over  a  country  in  this  state  of  anarchy  as  a 
hereditary  monarchy  without  guarantees.  Debts  and  poverty  cannot 
support  princes  and  courts.  Further,  the  lowest  class  would  fall  into 
destitution  and  would  dread  inequality,  while  the  generals  and 
ambitious  men  in  all  classes  would  not  be  prepared  to  lose  their 
power.  A  country  dependent  on  an  individual  runs  a  gambler's  risk 
every  day.  .  .  .  No  European  prince  will  mount  these  royal  gallows.^ 

Nor  would  he  mount  it  himself.  He  resigned  office  in  1830  and  died 
shortly  afterwards,  summing  up  his  career  with  the  words  'There 
have  been  three  great  fools  in  history:  Jesus,  Don  Quixote  and  1'. 

The  basic  trouble  in  South  America  was,  of  course,  religious.  The 
rising  against  Spain  had  been  spontaneous,  uniting  most  of  the 
Creoles  against  an  outside  domination.  It  was  headed  by  men  of 
liberal  views,  fired  by  the  example  of  America  and  inspired  by  doc- 
trines from  France.  But  these  were  fundamentally  opposed  by  others 
who,  while  wanting  liberation,  were  in  all  other  respects  conservative. 
Against  visionary  anti-clericals  were  arrayed  catholic  and  slave- 
owning  aristocrats  with  a  Spanish  dislike  for  government  in  any  form. 
With  a  poor  and  illiterate  population  and  with  this  lack  of  unity 
among  the  politically  active,  a  monarchy  was  the  only  possible 
solution.  But  monarchy  was  detested  by  the  liberals  who  had  headed 
the  revolt.  Bolivar  saw  the  practical  need  for  kingship  but  would  not 
renounce  all  his  republican  views  in  order  to  be  crowned.  How  could 
he  who  had  been  too  shocked  to  attend  Napoleon's  coronation  now 
accept  a  crown  for  himself?  He  could  see  that  the  constitutions  being 
drawn  up  by  the  liberals,  'the  inventions  of  well-meaning  vision- 
aries','^ were  utterly  futile  but  he  could  see  no  alternative  but  dictator- 
ship. He  died  leaving  the  problem  unresolved. 

What  followed  was  a  prolonged  period  of  political  instability 
throughout  South  America;  phases  of  disorder  alternating  with 
phases  of  dictatorship.  Few  of  the  dictators  have  had  anything  like 
Bolivar's  political  scruples. 

The  South  American  dictator  is  the  caudillo  or  military  leader, 
leader  of  a  party;  sometimes  leader  of  an  intellectual  group,  more 
often  leader  of  a  military  class.  Politics  were  confused  in  the  nine- 

'  Ludwig.  op.  cit.  p.  295.  The  fate  of  Maximilian  was  to  show  that  Bolivar  was  right 
in  this  as  in  so  much  else. 

-  The  Evolution  of  Modern  Latin  America.  R.  A.  Humphreys.  Oxford,  1946.  See 
p.  79  et  seq. 


256  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

teenth  century  by  the  mutual  hostility  of  landowner  and  peasant, 
oligarch  and  half-breed,  catholic  and  secularist,  country  and  town. 
Sierra  and  seacoast,  military  and  civil. 

Each  party  supports  a  leader,  an  interest,  a  dogma;  on  the  one  side 
a  man  beholds  his  own  party,  the  missionaries  of  truth  and  culture; 
the  others  are  his  enemies,  mercenary  and  corrupt.  Each  group 
believes  that  it  seeks  to  retain  the  supremacy  in  the  name  of  dis- 
interested virtue  and  patriotism.  Rosas  used  to  call  his  opponents 
'infamous  savages'.  For  the  gang  in  possession  of  power,  the  revolu- 
tionaries are  malefactors;  for  the  latter  the  ruling  party  are  merely  a 
government  of  thieves  and  tyrants.  There  are  gods  of  good  and  evil,  as 
in  the  Oriental  theogonies.  Educated  in  the  Roman  Church,  Ameri- 
cans bring  into  politics  the  absolutism  of  religious  dogmas;  they  have 
no  conception  of  toleration.  The  dominant  party  prefers  to  annihilate 
its  adversaries.  .  .  .' 

Revolutions  have  followed  one  after  another.  The  Republic  of 
Bolivia  had  sixty  revolts,  ten  constitutions  and  six  presidents  assas- 
sinated between  1826  and  1898.  Peru  had  forty  revolts  and  fifteen 
constitutions  in  about  the  same  length  of  time.  Ecuador  had  twenty- 
three  dictators  in  about  eighty  years,  Venezuela  had  fifty-two  risings 
in  seventy  years.-  The  Dominican  Republic  had  forty-three  presidents 
in  seventy-two  years.  Mexico  had  eight  revolutions  and  thirty-seven 
governments  between  1828  and  1867.  Chile  had  three  constitutions 
and  ten  governments  in  seven  years,  five  revolutions  between  1827  and 
1829.  Throughout  South  America  the  pattern  was  much  the  same. 
The  aristocracy  of  the  hacienda  was  allied  with  the  church  against 
the  liberals — the  Whites  versus  the  Reds,  the  'Bigwigs'  versus  the 
Radicals.  There  was  no  stability  except  under  the  more  successful 
dictators.  Thus,  Rosas  ruled  Argentina  for  twenty-three  years, 
Francia  ruled  Paraguay  for  twenty-six  years,  Gomez  ruled  Venezuela 
for  twenty-seven  years  and  Diaz  ruled  Mexico  for  thirty-four.  Some 
of  these  dictators  ruled  extremely  well — Cardenas,  Pardo,''  Blanco 
and  Juarez  for  example — while  others  ruled  badly.  But  everyone 
could  see  that  even  a  bad  dictator  was  preferable  to  the  periods  of 
anarchy  which  followed  each  dictator's  death.  The  one  exception  to 
the  rule  was  Brazil.  There  a  monarchy  had  been  established  in  1824, 
providing  peace  until  1889.  Then  a  bloodless  revolution  led  to  the 
establishment  of  a  Republic  in  1891.  The  sequel  is  as  significant  as 
the  earlier  part  of  the  story,  for  Brazil  came  under  a  dictatorship  in 
1930  and  was  ruled  very  competently  by  Vargas  until  1945. 

It  is  difficult  to  make  a  coherent  story  out  of  events  in  their  nature 
so  confused.  But  it  would  be  roughly  true  to  say  that  most  of  the 

'  Latin  America:  its  rise  and  progress.  F.  G.  Caldcron.  London,  1919.  p.  369. 

^  Ihicl.  p.  103  et  scq. 

'Peru.  C.  R.  Enock.  London,  1925. 


THE     CAUDILLOS  257 

South  American  Republics  were  still  experiencing  alternate  dictator- 
ship and  chaos  in  1850.  By  1870  there  was  a  slight  tendency  towards 
more  settled  administration,  a  reflection  of  democratic  trends  in 
Europe.  This  tendency  became  more  marked  after  1900  as  the 
influence  of  the  United  States  was  established  over  Cuba  and 
Panama.  At  much  the  same  time  South  America  was  becoming  a 
principal  source  of  grain  and  meat  for  the  European  market.  Ameri- 
can capital  began  to  be  invested  in  Brazil  and  Peru  and  British 
capital  in  the  Argentine. 

Between  1913  and  1929  the  history  of  Latin  America  was  charac- 
terized by  important  political  and  social  changes  and  notable  material 
progress.  In  several  countries  the  middle  and  lower  classes  became 
more  assertive  and  exercised  no  little  influence  over  governmental 
policy.  In  others  strong  executives  revealed  greater  interest  in  the 
masses  and  inaugurated  systems  of  social  welfare  under  state  control. 
Of  the  seven  new  constitutions  framed  in  as  many  countries,  at  least 
five  were  significant  because  of  their  provisions  with  reference  to 
labor;  and  everywhere  the  period  was  marked  by  unprecedented  social 
legislation.^ 

Growing  prosperity  in  1914-18,  in  creating  a  new  middle  class, 
hurried  South  America  on  from  dictatorship  to  democracy  and  from 
democracy  to  socialism.  By  1920  Chile,  for  example,  had  a  vastly 
expanded  and  burdensome  civil  service.  More  or  less  socialistic  legis- 
lation characterised  the  period  from  1920  to  1925  and  the  various  left 
wing  parties  then  gained  considerable  influence  during  that  period. - 
Socialism  was  also  attempted  in  other  States,  notably  in  Uruguay 
from  1903  and  (after  1911)  in  Mexico.  But  socialism,  and  even 
democracy,  rested  upon  insecure  foundations.  The  population  was 
racially  mixed  and  the  Indians  were  still  living  in  the  Middle  Ages.^ 
Progress  had  been  far  too  rapid  and  superficial.  The  result  was  that 
the  trade  depression  of  1930-31  brought  about  revolutions  in  twelve 
out  of  twenty  Latin  American  republics.  Following  a  period  of  chaos 
there  was  a  general  return  to  dictatorship.  Chile  was  ahead  of  the 
fashion  in  having  Carlos  Ibafiez  as  dictator  in  1927.  Brazil  had 
Vargas  as  dictator  from  1930,  Mexico  had  Cardenas  from  1934. 
Uruguay  had  a  dictatorship  from  1933  and  Guatemala  from  1931. 
I  n  the  Argentine,  one  of  the  most  prosperous  states,  there  was  dictator- 
ship from  1931  almost  to  the  present  day."*  By  1930,  incidentally, 

'  Historical  Evolution  of  Hispanic  America.  J.  Fred  Rippy.  New  York,  1932.  p.  272. 

''  Chile:  an  outline  of  its  geography,  economics  and  politics.  G.  J.  Butland.  London, 
1951.  p.  42  et  seq. 

^  See  Rippy.  op.  cit.  p.  433  et  seq.  In  1929  there  were  in  South  America  34  milhon 
white  people,  30  million  mixed,  26  million  negroes  and  mulattoes  and  20  million 
Indians. 

^  Juan  Peron,  the  recent  dictator,  became  President  in  1946  and  followed  the 
example  of  the  European  dictators  rather  than  that  of  previous  Caudillos.  It  is  interest- 
ing that  the  Argentine  should  have  had  a  dictatorship  before,  during  and  after  the  Hitler 
period  of  20th  Century  Europe. 


258  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

Europe  was  beginning  to  follow  South  American  precedent,  produc- 
ing new  theories  to  justify  what  had  for  long  been  the  established 
practice  in  Colombia,  Paraguay,  Bolivia  and  Ecuador.  Nor  was  the 
South  American  example  unnoticed  by  European  critics  of  democ- 
racy. Francia,  for  example,  dictator  of  Paraguay  from  1813  to  1840, 
was  particularly  admired,  as  was  Diaz  later  on. 

When  he  died  Francia  was  mourned  by  his  people,  a  people  about  to 
reveal  in  warfare  a  Spartan  tenacity,  a  tranquil  heroism.  .  .  .  Francia 
had  formed  a  proud  and  warlike  race.  He  was  the  most  extraordinary 
man  the  world  had  seen  for  a  hundred  years,  said  Carlyle  in  one  of  his 
Essays — a  Dominican  ripe  for  canonisation,  an  excellent  superior  of 
Jesuits,  a  rude  and  atrabilious  Grand  Inquisitor.  The  Scottish  historian 
praises  the  grim  silences  of  Francia — 'The  grim  unspeakabilities' — 
that  mute  solitude  in  which  remarkable  men  commune  with  the 
mystery  of  things.^ 

The  fact  that  South  America  raced  through  so  much  political 
experience  in  so  short  a  time  must  not  blind  us  to  the  nature  of  the 
process.  Monarchy  was  what  most  of  the  States  needed  and  it  was  to 
dictatorship  (as  a  substitute  for  monarchy)  that  most  of  the  States 
continually  returned.  There  are  grounds  for  believing  that,  without 
an  initial  period  of  monarchy,  the  later  development  of  democracy  is 
not  even  possible;  not,  at  least,  in  a  State  of  any  size  or  any  diversity 
of  population. 

Resembling  each  other  in  language  and  race,  and  in  the  general 
nature  of  their  problems,  the  South  American  Republics  are  a  sort 
of  modern  equivalent  of  the  Greek  City  States.  They  have  presented, 
at  different  times,  examples  of  nearly  every  form  of  rule.  It  is  to  be 
expected,  therefore,  that  they  should  have  produced  their  own 
political  theorists,  profiting  by  so  many  object  lessons,  so  many  tales 
of  success  and  failure.  Nor  is  such  an  expectation  disappointed  in  the 
event.  Most  of  the  theorists  were  liberals,  teaching  the  doctrines  of 
Bentham,  Toqueville  and  John  Stuart  Mill.  Many  were  more  or  less 
influenced  by  Alphonse  Lamartine  (1790-1869),  especially  after  the 
revolution  in  France  of  1848.  Chief  of  the  liberal  theorists  was 
Lastarria  of  Chile  but  after  him  came  Bilbao,  founder  of  the  Society 
of  Equality,  exiled  for  blasphemy  and  sedition.  Montalvo  in  Ecuador 
was  of  the  same  school  of  thought,  an  opponent  of  the  Church,  but 
an  admirer  of  Christianity.  He  was  also,  however,  and  significantly, 
an  admirer  of  Bolivar,  whom  he  compares  with  Napoleon  rather  to 
the  latter's  disadvantage.  From  Montalvo  we  learn  something  of  the 
way  in  which  the  best  of  the  Caudillos  were  regarded  in  his  day. 
Writing  of  Napoleon  but  thinking  more  of  Bolivar,  he  says: 

^  Latin  America,  its  rise  and  progress.  F.  G.  Calderon.  Trans,  by  B.  Miall.  London, 
1919.  p.  195.  See  also  Paraguay.  W.  H.  Koebel.  London,  1919.  Chap.  X.  (pp.  164-179). 


THE     CAUDILLOS  259 

In  Napoleon  there  is  something  more  than  in  other  men;  a  sense,  a 
wheel  in  the  mechanism  of  understanding,  a  fibre  in  the  heart.  He  looks 
across  the  world  from  the  Apennines  to  the  Pillars  of  Hercules,  from 
the  pyramids  of  Egypt  to  the  snows  of  Russia.  Kings  tremble,  pallid, 
and  half-lifeless;  thrones  crack  and  crumble;  the  nations  look  up  and 
regard  him  and  are  afraid,  and  bend  the  knee  before  the  giant. ^ 

He  thus  comes  near  to  being  an  apologist  of  dictatorship.  That 
could  not  be  said  of  Vigil  or  Sarmiento,  liberal  thinkers  respectively 
of  Peru  and  the  Argentine.  All  these  looked  chiefly  to  France  for 
their  ideas  and  others,  between  1848  and  1858,  regarded  Lamartine 
as  a  'demi-god,  a  second  Moses'.  They  quoted  with  approval  his 
saying  that  democracy  is,  in  principle,  the  direct  reign  of  God;  the 
application  of  Christian  ideas  to  the  world  of  politics."  Almost  alone 
among  these  theorists  was  Alberdi,  who  pleaded  for  monarchy. 

'The  Republic  has  been  and  is  still  the  bread  of  Presidents,  the  trade 
of  soldiers,  the  industry  of  lawyers  without  causes,  and  journalists 
without  talent;  the  refuge  of  the  second-rate  of  every  species,  and  the 
machine  for  the  amalgamation  of  all  the  dross  of  society.'^ 

It  is  a  fair  description  and  Calderon  adds  his  comment  that  'amid 
the  sterile  enthusiasm  of  romantic  politicians  his  book  stands  out,  in 
its  gravity,  sobriety,  common  sense,  and  realism,  like  a  lesson  for  all 
time'.*  It  was  not  however  a  lesson  that  his  countrymen  were  willing 
to  learn.  Neither,  on  the  other  hand,  have  European  political  theorists 
shown  much  interest  as  yet  in  the  experience  or  the  political  thought 
of  South  America.'^  In  the  histories  of  the  future  the  ideas  of  Lastarria, 
Montalvo  and  Alberdi  would  seem  to  deserve  at  least  as  much  space 
as  we  now  devote  to  those  of  Tom  Paine  or  Graham  Wallas. 


'  Calderon.  op.  cit.  Sec  Chap.  I.  Book  V.  (pp.  235-248). 
'  I  hid.  p.  244. 
-■'  Ihkl.  p.  246. 
^  Ihid.  p.  247. 

'•See,  however,    Dictatorship.   Its  History  and  Theory.   A   Cobban.   London,    1939. 
pp.  144-159. 


CHAPTER    XXI 

Twentieth  Century  Dictatorship 


THROUGHOUT  the  first  half  of  the  present  century  dictatorship 
has  been,  beyond  dispute,  the  characteristic  form  of  rule. 
Thinkers  of  the  Enghsh-speaking  world  have  tended,  it  is  true,  to 
consider  dictatorship  as  no  more  than  a  momentary  deviation  from 
the  path  towards  democracy.  They  attribute  just  the  same  permanence 
to  democratic  government  that  their  forefathers  attributed  in  turn  to 
monarchy  and  aristocracy.  But  there  is  no  particular  reason  for  sup- 
posing that  democracy  will  last  any  longer  than  the  earlier  forms  of 
rule;  and  historical  analogy  would  incline  us  rather  to  doubt  whether 
it  will  even  last  as  long.  Predictions,  however,  are  not  to  the  present 
purpose.  The  plain  fact  is  that  democracy  passed  its  peak  of  popu- 
larity in  about  1918.'  There  was  a  moment  at  the  end  of  the  First 
World  War  when  monarchies  had  collapsed  in  Germany,  Austria 
and  Russia  and  when  the  fate  of  the  world  was  to  be  decided  by  the 
United  States,  the  British  Empire  and  France.  The  future  was  to  be 
made  safe  for  democracy.  At  that  very  moment  the  first  of  the  new 
totalitarian  states  was  founded  in  Russia  by  Lenin  and  the  second 
in  Poland  by  Jozef  Pilsudski,  who  remained  in  office  until  his  death 
in  1935.  It  was  the  beginning  of  a  landslide. 

It  was  Italy  that  now  led  the  way,  Mussolini  becoming  dictator 
there  in  1922.  Dictatorships  were  founded  thereafter  in  this  order: 
Spain  (1923),  Turkey  (1923),  Chile  (1927),  Greece  (1928),  Brazil 
(1930),  Dominican  Republic  (1930),  Argentine  (1931),  Guatemala 
(1931),  Portugal  (1932),  Uruguay  (1933),  Austria  (1933),  Germany 
(1933),  Mexico  (1934),  Greece  (again,  in  1936),  and  France  (1940). 
The  student  confronted  by  this  list  must  find  it  difficult  to  talk  of  the 
inevitable  progress  of  nations  towards  parliamentary  rule  with 
universal  suff'rage.  Nor  must  he  forget  that  there  were  significant 
tendencies  towards  dictatorship  in  countries  which  finally  opposed 
the  trend.  As  against  that  it  may  be  argued  that  the  triumph  of  the 
English-speaking  peoples  in  1945,  with  the  collapse  of  the  dictator- 
ships involved  in  the  Second  World  War,  showed  that  democracy 

'  It  is  perhaps  significant  that  Oswald  Spengler's  booic  The  Decline  of  the  West 
appeared  in  1918  and  had  an  instant  and  widespread  circulation;  as  much  perhaps  on 
the  strength  of  its  title  as  on  its  contents.  Some  ninety  thousand  copies  were  sold  in  a 
few  years  and  it  was  translated  into  many  languages.  See  Social  Philosophies  of  an  age 
of  Crisis.  P.  A.  Sorokin.  London,  1952.  Chap.  IV.  p.  72  ci.  scq. 

260 


TWENTIETH     CENTURY     DICTATORSHIP  261 

was  very  much  alive.  The  trend  should  accordingly  have  been  re- 
versed. In  point  of  fact,  however,  the  trend  has  continued,  with  new 
dictatorships  set  up  in  Rumania  (1940),  Yugoslavia  (1944),  the  Argen- 
tine (1946),  Nationalist  China  (1946),  Paraguay  (1947),  Thailand 
(1947),  Peru  (1948),  Communist  China  (1949),  Vietnam  (1949), 
Venezuela  (1952),  Egypt  (1952),  Cuba  (1952)  and  Colombia  (1953). 
No  exact  statistics  are  possible,  for  a  dictatorship  is  not  easy  to  define, 
but  there  are  grounds  for  supposing  that  dictatorship  is  still  on  the 
increase  and  might  extend  at  any  time  to  such  countries  as  Indonesia 
and  South  Africa. 

There  is  room  for  disagreement  about  the  details  of  this  general 
tendency.  Was  Lenin  a  dictator?  Was  Venizelos?  But  there  can  be 
no  question,  surely,  that  the  tendency  exists.  There  may  be  more 
democracies  than  ever,  and  more  still  to  be  created  as  a  result  of 
colonial  territories  becoming  autonomous.  The  nineteenth  century 
liberal  impetus  has  not  been  lost  in  the  more  remote  parts  of  the 
world.  But  the  surge  of  these  distant  waves  is  clearly  the  result  of  a 
central  movement  that  has  itself  ceased.  Democracy  died  long  ago 
as  a  creed  and  an  inspiration.  It  died  in  the  middle  of  the  First  World 
War,  just  before  the  moment  of  its  apparent  triumph. 

The  question,  whether  men  will  rise  towards  the  higher  standard 
which  the  prophets  of  democracy  deemed  possible  has  been  exercising 
every  thoughtful  mind  since  August  1914.  and  it  will  be  answered  less 
hopefully  now  than  it  would  have  been  at  any  time  in  the  hundred 
years  preceding.  That  many  millions  of  men  should  perish  in  a  strife 
which  brought  disasters  to  the  victors  only  less  than  those  it  brought  to 
the  vanquished  is  an  event  without  parallel  in  the  annals  of  the  race. 
There  has  probably  been  since  the  fifth  century  no  moment  in  history 
which  has  struck  mankind  with  such  terror  and  dismay  as  have  the 
world-wide  disasters  which  began  in  1914,  and  have  not  yet  passed 
away.  The  explanations  of  the  facts  are  no  more  cheering  than  the 
facts  themselves.  .  .  .  Knowledge  has  been  accumulated,  the  methods 
and  instruments  of  research  have  been  improved  .  .  .  but  the  mental 
powers  of  the  individual  man  have  remained  stationary,  no  stronger, 
no  wider  in  their  range,  than  they  were  thousands  of  years  ago,  and 
the  supremely  great  who  are  fit  to  grapple  with  the  vast  problems 
which  the  growth  of  population  and  the  advances  of  science  have 
created  come  no  more  frequently,  and  may  fail  to  appear  just  when 
they  are  most  needed.^ 

So  wrote  James  Bryce  in  a  book  published  in  1929,  compiled 
before  the  trade  depression  had  even  begun.  And  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  he  was  right.  The  liberals  lost  their  faith  when  they 
discovered  that  democracies  can  kill.  Democracy,  which  had  been 
thought  to  provide  the  answer  to  all  problems,  had  already  been  found 

•  Modern  Democracies.  James  Bryce  (Viscount  Bryce).  2  Vols.  London,  1929.  Vol.  IF. 
p.  667. 


262  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

lacking  the  answer  to  one;  the  problem  of  war.  It  was  soon  to  be 
found  equally  devoid  of  an  answer  to  a  second  problem;  the  problem 
of  peace.  But  even  before  that  second  discovery  the  institution  had 
begun  to  collapse.  To  quote  Bryce  again: — 

In  the  form  which  it  has  almost  everywhere  taken,  that  of  govern- 
ment by  a  representative  assembly,  democracy  shows  signs  of  decay; 
for  the  reputation  and  moral  authority  of  elected  legislatures,  although 
these,  being  indispensable,  must  remain,  have  been  declining  in  almost 
every  country.  In  some  they  are  deemed  to  have  shown  themselves 
unequal  to  their  tasks,  in  others  to  have  yielded  to  temptations,  in 
others  to  be  too  subservient  to  party,  while  in  all  they  have  lost  some 
part  of  the  respect  and  social  deference  formerly  accorded  to  them. 
Whither,  then,  has  gone  so  much  of  the  power  as  may  have  departed 
from  them?  In  some  countries  it  would  seem  to  be  passing  to  the 
Cabinet — England  is  often  cited  as  an  example — in  others  to  the 
directly  elected  Head  of  the  State,  as  for  instance  to  the  Governors  in 
the  several  States  of  the  American  Union.  In  France,  though  there  has 
been  no  definite  change,  calls  are  heard  for  a  strong  President,  and  in 
Argentina  the  President  already  overtops  the  Chambers.  What  is 
common  to  all  these  cases  is  the  disposition  to  trust  one  man  or  a  few 
led  by  one,  rather  than  an  elected  assembly.' 

Writing  a  decade  later  and  writing  in  fervent  defence  of  democracy, 
Eduard  Benes  had  to  admit  that  the  democratic  governments  had  been 
widely  criticised. 

The  deficiencies,  weaknesses,  and  of  course  great  mistakes  of  the 
individual  democracies,  which  it  was  apparently  impossible  to  avoid, 
are  the  third  category  of  facts  which  played  a  specially  important  role 
in  the  downfall  of  European  democracies.  There  were  the  excesses  of 
the  party  system,  its  mistakes  and  exaggerations;  the  slowness  and 
inefficiency  of  democratic  methods  of  work  and  leadership  during 
times  of  crises  and  at  moments  when  quick  actions  and  quick  decisions 
were  necessary;  the  partiality,  corruption  and  incapacity  of  bureau- 
cracy, subjugated  very  often  to  the  exaggerated  party  spirit;  the 
deficiencies,  mediocrity  and  mistakes  of  the  democratic  leaders. - 

If  Benes  was  aware  of  such  criticism,  others  without  his  democratic 
idealism  were  still  more  ready  to  see  where  democracy  had  failed. 
These  others  had  as  their  basic  motive  a  dislike  of  the  socialism  (or 
communism)  to  which  democracy — except  in  a  small  and  simple 
community — was  obviously  bound  to  lead.  We  read  in  Mein  Kampf 
that  Adolf  Hitler  (then  aged  nineteen)  attended  the  Chamber  of 
Deputies  at  Vienna  for  a  year.  Critical  from  the  first,  he  listened  to 
confused  debates  at  which  everyone  shouted.  He  also  listened  to 
bored  debates  when  scarcely  anyone  was  there.  He  finally  concluded 

'  Brycc.  op.  cit.  VoL  II.  p.  632. 

-  Democracy  Today  and  Tomorrow.  E.  Bcncs.  London,  1939.  p.  61. 


TWENTIETH     CENTURY     DICTATORSHIP  263 

that  'the  institution  itself  was  wrong  in  its  very  essence  and  form'. 
Merely  to  abolish  it,  on  the  one  hand,  would  be  to  reinstate  the 
Habsburgs  in  absolute  power.  To  leave  it  in  existence,  on  the  other 
hand,  would  be  to  open  the  gates  to  socialism. 

Democracy,  as  practised  in  Western  Europe  to-day,  is  the  fore- 
runner of  Marxism.  In  fact  the  latter  would  not  be  conceivable  without 
the  former.  Democracy  is  the  breeding-ground  in  which  the  bacilli  of 
the  Marxist  world  pest  can  grow  and  spread.  By  the  introduction  of 
parliamenlarianism  democracy  produced  an  abortion  of  filth  and  fire, 
the  creative  fire  of  which,  however,  seems  to  have  died  out.^ 

To  abolish  parliament  without  restoring  monarchy  could  only 
mean  finding  a  form  of  rule  different  from  either.  Hitler  was  typical 
of  many  in  wondering  whether  some  form  of  dictatorship  might  not 
be  preferable.  In  their  opposition  to  social  democracy  these  middle- 
class  spokesmen  were  neither  more  nor  less  selfish  than  the  trades- 
unionists  they  sought  to  oppose.  They  could  point,  moreover,  to 
very  real  defects  in  democratic  governments  of  the  day.  They  could 
find  valid  reasons  for  advocating  a  form  of  government  which  might 
seem,  at  the  outset,  more  efficient.  It  is  essential  to  realise  that  dic- 
tatorship was  not  merely  imposed  by  military  force.  That  there  was 
normally  an  element  of  violence  in  the  process  by  which  the  dictators 
gained  power  is  true.  There  was  also,  however,  considerable  support 
from  the  public  at  large;  and  without  that  support  the  rise  of  most 
dictators  would  scarcely  have  been  possible. 

Not  all  dictators  came  into  power  on  the  heels  of  a  collapsing 
socialist  democracy.  Some  were  installed,  as  we  shall  see,  in  countries 
where  democracy  was  hardly  known.  But  the  tendency  for  dictator- 
ship to  succeed  democracy,  after  a  period  of  confusion,  was  exempli- 
fied in  several  countries  of  which  Italy  was  perhaps  the  f.rst.  Italy  had 
shown  liberal-labour  tendencies  in  1912-14  which  were  checked 
momentarily  when  Italy  entered  the  war  against  Germany  and 
Austria.  Overwhelming  defeat  followed  at  Caporetto  in  October, 
1917.  Rallying  quickly  the  Italians  managed,  with  Allied  help,  to 
defeat  the  Austrians  in  1918  at  Vittorio  Veneto.  They  afterwards 
convinced  themselves  that  they  had  won  the  war,  being  cheated  by 
the  French  and  British  of  their  proper  reward.  They  had  been  deceived 
by  President  Wilson.  Their  own  assessment  of  their  contribution  to 
victory  differed  sharply  from  the  assessment  of  others  and  Baron 
Sonnino  had  little  success,  therefore,  in  his  efforts  to  sustain  the 
Italian  claims.  The  government  was  discredited  by  that  failure  and 
the  Socialists  began  to  recruit  masses  of  adherents  from  among  the 
disillusioned  and  resentful.  The  Socialist  Party  had  opposed  the  war 

'  Mein  Kampf.  Adolf  Hitler.  Trans,  by  James  Murphy.  2  Vols.  London,  1939.  Vol.  I. 
p.  78. 


264  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

and  its  members  could  now  regard  it  as  a  virtual  defeat;  just  such  a 
defeat,  in  fact,  as  had  preceded  the  revolution  in  Russia.  Impressed 
by  this  analogy,  the  Socialist  Party  affiliated  to  the  Communist 
International  in  March,  1919,  before  achieving  a  striking  success  in 
the  General  Election  of  November.  The  Socialists  won,  it  is  true, 
only  156  seats  out  of  508.  They  were,  nevertheless,  the  strongest  single 
party,  supported  by  a  third  of  the  voters  and  gaining  a  proportionate 
control  in  local  government.  Rather  surprised  by  their  own  success, 
the  Socialist  leaders  failed  to  grasp  their  opportunity.  Uttering  the 
slogan  'The  Revolution  is  not  made.  The  Revolution  comes', ^  they 
allowed  their  movement  to  spend  itself  in  pointless  demonstrations. 
Climax  to  a  period  of  confusion  was  the  occupation  of  the  North 
Italian  factories  in  September,  1920.  In  the  course  of  this  episode  half 
a  million  workers  were  in  possession  of  six  hundred  factories,  with 
armed  guards  posted  and  elected  committees  in  control.  Nor  did  they 
withdraw  until  promised  a  twenty  per  cent  wage  increase  and  a  share 
in  the  future  management. 

Now  was  the  moment  for  revolution. 

Had  the  leaders  of  the  General  Confederation  of  Labour  and  of  the 
Socialist  Party  wished  to  strike  a  decisive  blow,  here  was  the  oppor- 
tunity. .  .  .  The  bankers,  the  big  industrialists  and  big  landlords  waited 
for  the  social  revolution  as  sheep  wait  to  be  led  to  the  slaughter.  If  a 
Communist  revolution  could  be  brought  about  by  the  bewilderment 
and  cowardice  on  the  part  of  the  ruling  classes,  the  Italian  people  in 
September,  1920,  could  have  made  as  many  Communist  revolutions 
as  they  wished.^ 

This  was  proved  by  the  earlier  events  in  1920 — railway  strikes, 
agricultural  strikes  in  Ferrara  and  Lombardy,  rioting  in  the  streets 
and  even  fisticuffs  in  Parliament.  The  government  headed  by  Nitti 
and  later  by  Giolitti  was  composed  of  liberal  pacifists  who  had  in 

1919  agreed  to  improve  the  universal  suffrage  (introduced  in  1912) 
by  proportional  representation.  They  were  faced  in  consequence  with 
a  variety  of  political  parties.  These  did  not  include  the  Fascisti,  how- 
ever, who  failed  at  this  time  to  win  a  single  seat.  Giolitti  met  the 
situation  in  the  factories  by  a  policy  of  inaction  and  the  workers 
realised  that  they  must  either  stage  a  revolution  or  retreat  from  their 
position.  They  shrank  from  a  Communist  Revolution  (many  being 
Catholics)  and  so  lost  the  initiative. 

It  was  during  the  lull  which  followed  the  workers'  withdrawal  in 

1920  that  the  reaction  began.  Failing  actual  revolution,  it  was 
inevitable  that  the  professional  classes,  ex-officers  and  students 
should  rally  to  defend  themselves.  The  Fascist  party,  opposed  to 

'■  Fascism  and  Social  Revohilion.  R.  Palme  Dutt.  London,  1934.  p.  97. 
-  G.  Salvemini,  quoted  in  R.  Palme  Dutt.  op.  cit.  p.  98. 


TWENTIETH     CENTURY     DICTATORSHIP  265 

Communism,  attacked  and  burnt  the  Labour  Party  headquarters 
at  Bologna  in  January,  1921.  Encouraged  by  this  success  (and  more  by 
the  failure  of  the  police  to  interfere),  people  of  wealth  began  to  contri- 
bute to  Fascist  funds.  Membership  of  the  party,  insignificant  in  1920, 
rose  to  248,000  in  the  following  year.  Between  January  and  April, 
1921,  the  Fascists  attacked  and  destroyed  Labour  Party  Offices  and 
Clubs,  inflicting  and  sustaining  casualties  and  gaining  further  sup- 
port. In  the  elections  of  May,  1921,  only  35  Fascists  were  elected  as 
against  122  Socialists  and  16  Communists.  It  was  not,  however,  by 
votes  that  the  Fascists  could  hope  to  win.  Following  Giolitti's  resig- 
nation in  July,  1921,  the  liberals  lost  any  cohesion  they  had  ever  had. 
By  November  the  Fascists  had  drawn  up  a  programme  and  a  creed, 
primarily  designed  to  attract  further  middle-class  support. 

The  Confederation  declares  that  the  increase  of  production  and  means 
of  production  implies,  not  only  the  increase  of  the  productive  types, 
but  at  the  same  time  the  increase  of  the  middle  classes  and  an  ever- 
growing diffusion  of  wealth  and  property;  which  also  means  that  it 
will  afford  to  the  proletarian  elites  the  possibility  of  acquiring  and 
directly  managing  the  instruments  and  materials  of  production  and  of 
rendering  themselves  indispensable  both  socially  and  technically.^ 

Organised  now  on  military  lines,  the  Fascists  went  into  action 
afresh,  captured  Milan  in  August,  1922  and  prepared  for  the  march 
on  Rome.  One  significant  Fascist  proposal  made  at  this  time  was  to 
minimise  the  functions  of  the  State. 

.  .  .  We  have  had  enough  of  the  State  railwayman,  the  State  postman, 
and  the  State  insurance  official.  We  have  had  enough  of  the  State 
administration  at  the  expense  of  the  Italian  tax-payer,  which  has  done 
nothing  but  aggravate  the  exhausted  financial  condition  of  the 
country.  .  .  .- 

Under  battle-cries  such  as  this,  inspiring  if  slightly  obscure,  the 
Fascists  went  forward  to  their  bloodless  revolution  of  October  28th, 
which  resulted  in  Mussolini  becoming  Prime  Minister,  at  the  King's 
invitation,  on  the  30th.  He  secured  full  powers  from  the  House  of 
Representatives  by  a  vote  of  275  to  90,  announced  a  programme  of 
'Order  and  Economy',  and  gained  a  firm  majority  in  the  general 
election  of  1924.  Among  his  first  achievements  in  office  was  the  re- 
duction of  the  public  pay-roll. 

.  .  .  Mussolini  realised  that  Italy  was  suffering,  in  common  with  most 
Southern  countries,  from  a  plethora  of  officials  and  State  employees. 
He  began  by  amalgamating  overlapping  ministries  and  suppressing 
superfluous  offices.  A  ruthless  cutting  of  staffs  in  the  various  ministries 

'  Three  Master  Builders  and  Another.  P.  H.  Box.  London,  1925.  Manifesto  quoted  on 
p.  158. 

-  Ihid.  quotation  on  p.  169. 


266  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

was  inaugurated,  designed  to  discover  the  exact  point  at  which  the 
services  could  be  maintained  in  a  state  of  efficiency.  In  the  six  months 
ending  30th  April,  1923,  17,232  men  were  dismissed  from  the  railways, 
which  since  the  war  had  become  under  the  State  management  hope- 
lessly over-staffed  and  inevitably  insolvent.  Notice  was  given  that  by 
the  end  of  1923  the  staff  must  be  reduced  by  another  300,000.  The 
stupendous  disorder  of  the  State  railways  can  be  gauged  by  the  fact 
that  after  these  amputations,  they  increased  in  efficiency.^ 

This  policy  of  'Order  and  Economy'  also  allowed  Mussolini  to 
abolish  death  duties,  reduce  direct  taxation  and  repeal  much  of  the 
socialist  legislation  passed  by  the  liberals.  The  middle  classes  thus 
won  over,  Mussolini  next  turned  to  console  the  workers  and  even- 
tually (under  the  pressure  of  war)  went  far  towards  re-introducing 
the  economic  controls  he  had  just  abolished.-  However  inconsistent 
its  policy,  Fascist  government  could  count  at  one  time  upon  a  great 
measure  of  popular  support.  Nor  was  there  any  display  of  Italian 
grief  when  'the  whole  Parliamentary  structure  of  government  in 
Italy  crumbled  like  a  stucco  facade'.^  Mussolini  had  something  better 
than  parliamentary  support  in  a  Catholic  country  where  the  Pope 
(Pius  XI)  regarded  him — after  the  concordat  of  1929 — as  'the  in- 
comparable Minister".^  Nor  was  Mussolini  at  fault  when  he  said 
that  'Never  have  peoples  been  yearning  for  authority,  leadership, 
and  order  as  they  are  now\^ 

The  Dictatorships  of  to-day  were  thrown  up  by  the  swirl  of  events, 
but  they  have  developed  an  authoritarian  philosophy  to  buttress  their 
thrones.  Bolshevist,  Fascist  and  Nazi  agree  in  repudiating  nineteenth- 
century  Liberalism  as  a  creed  outworn.  .  .  . 

"Liberalism  only  flourished  for  half  a  century'  echoes  Mussolini. 
'It  was  born  in  1830  in  reaction  against  the  Holy  Alliance.  It  is  the 
logical,  and  indeed  historical,  forerunner  of  anarchy.  .  .  .'^ 

The  story  of  democracy  and  dictatorship  in  modern  Germany  is 
not  strikingly  different.  A  strong  liberal  movement  in  the  late  nine- 
teenth century  had  turned  towards  socialism  and  gained  a  measure 
of  socialist  legislation  in  Bismarck's  time.  Defeat  in  the  First  World 
War  had  combined  with  the  example  of  Russia  to  bring  about  the 
revolution  of  I9I8.  In  this  revolution  the  proletariat  gained  power. 

A  Council  of  People's  Commissars,  responsible  to  the  Workers'  and 
Soldiers'  Councils,  was  appointed,  consisting  of  three  majority  Social 

'  Ihid.  p.  174. 

■  Dictatorship.  A.  Cobban.  London,  1939.  p.  129. 

'  Cobban,  op.  cit.  p.  127. 

'  The  Official  Life  of  Benito  Miis.solini.  Gcorgio  Pini.  Trans,  by  Luigi  Villari.  London 
1939. 

'  Ihid.  p.  244. 

"  Dictatorship  in  Theory  and  Practice.  G.  P.  Gooch.  London,  1935.  (Conway  Mem- 
orial Lecture). 


THE     THEORY     OF     DICTATORSHIP  267 

Democrats,  and  three  Independents.  The  forms  which  had  thus  to  be 
adopted  revealed  how  completely  the  pressure  and  demand  of  the 
masses  in  the  moment  of  revolution  was  towards  the  Soviet  Re- 
public. .  .  .^ 

The  same  events  appeared  differently  to  another,  closer,  observer. 

.  .  .  The  great  middle  stratum  of  the  nation  had  fulfilled  its  duty  and 
paid  its  toll  of  blood.  One  extreme  of  the  population,  which  was  con- 
stituted of  the  best  elements,  had  given  a  typical  example  of  its  heroism 
and  had  sacrificed  itself  almost  to  a  man.  The  other  extreme,  which  was 
constituted  of  the  worst  elements  of  the  population,  had  preserved 
itself  almost  intact,  through  taking  advantage  of  absurd  laws  and  also 
because  the  authorities  failed  to  enforce  certain  articles  of  the  military 
code. 

This  carefully  preserved  scum  of  our  nation  then  made  the  Revo- 
lution. And  the  reason  why  it  could  do  so  was  that  the  extreme  section 
composed  of  the  best  elements  was  no  longer  there  to  oppose  it.  It  no 
longer  existed.  .  .  .'- 

It  is  the  fashion  among  communists  to  bewail  the  fact  that  the 
German  workers  missed  their  chance  in  1918-23,  failing  to  secure 
their  position  as  they  might  have  done  by  dispossessing  the  wealthy, 
taking  over  the  key  industries  and  arming  themselves  against  middle- 
class  revolt.  That  they  failed  to  make  the  most  of  their  opportunity 
is  clear.  It  is  at  least  equally  clear  that  they  furthered  their  own  ends 
to  a  very  considerable  extent.  The  Weimar  Republic  was  a  Social 
Welfare  State.  Rents  had  been  frozen  during  the  war  and  compre- 
hensive schemes  of  social  insurance  had  been  introduced  even  earlier. 
In  November,  1918,  fresh  legislation  secured  the  right  to  form  trades 
unions  and  the  right  to  strike.  Similar  reforms  introdu-^ed  the  eight- 
hour  day,  provided  for  collective  labour  agreements  and  allowed 
workers  a  share  in  the  control  of  industry.  Fixed  wage  scales  were 
agreed  by  arbitration  and  Conciliation  Boards  formed  to  settle  labour 
disputes — Boards  empowered  to  give  legally  binding  decisions  as  from 
1923.  Factory  Councils  existed  from  1920  and  in  1923  a  'Degree 
against  the  abuse  of  economic  power'  placed  the  Cartels  under  what 
was  virtually  state  control.  There  was  even  a  National  Economic 
Council  with  326  members  and  labour  interests  amply  represented. 
Means  Tests  were  abolished  in  1927,  by  which  date  most  trade  union 
objectives  had  been  more  or  less  achieved.^ 

The  working  class  gained  something,  therefore,  under  the  Weimar 
Republic.  The  middle  class,  by  contrast,  lost  everything.  The  inflation 
of  1923  destroyed  their  savings  and  left  them  resentful,  insecure  and 

'  Fascism  and  Social  Revolution.  R.  Palme  Dutt.  London,  1934.  pp.  110-111. 
-  Mein  Kampf.  Adolf  Hitler.  Trans,  by  James  Murphy.  London,  1939.  p.  428. 
'  See  The  Weimar  Republic.  G.  Scheele.  London,  1946. 


268  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

almost  ready  to  revolt.  Hayek  has  very  properly  pointed  out  that  the 
type  of  socialism  which  gives  security  to  skilled  workmen,  fixing 
wages  and  preventing  unemployment,  actually  diminishes  the  security 
of  everyone  else.^  The  impoverished  middle  class  had  been  left  out  in 
the  cold.  The  National  Socialists  or  Nazis  in  Germany  were  largely 
drawn  from  this  middle  class,  a  'white  collared  proletariat'  of 
lawyers,  teachers  and  engineers  who  retained  pretentions  to  power 
but  whose  actual  income  was  far  less  than  that  of  an  engine  driver 
or  other  skilled  artisan.  They  were  not  opposed  to  Socialism  as  such 
but  they  'expected  a  place  in  that  society  very  different  from  that 
which  society  ruled  by  labour  seemed  to  offer'.  To  an  opposition 
comprising  an  aristocracy  and  army  were  added  middle  class  elements 
and  even  such  of  the  lower  classes  as  were  outside  the  privileged 
bodies,  the  trades  unions  of  skilled  workers.  Adolf  Hitler  arose  as 
leader  of  this  opposition  and  made  much  of  the  fact  that  the  Socialist 
leaders  were,  some  of  them,  pacifists,  Jews  or  both.  In  a  speech  de- 
livered in  September,  1923,  he  asked: 

How  are  States  founded  ?  Through  the  personality  of  brilliant  leaders 
and  through  a  people  which  deserves  to  have  the  crown  of  laurel 
bound  about  its  brows.  Compare  with  them  the  'heroes'  of  this  Re- 
public! Shirkers,  Deserters,  and  Pacifists:  these  are  its  founders  and 
their  heroic  acts  consisted  in  leaving  in  the  lurch  the  soldiers  at  the 
front  .  .  .  while  at  home  against  old  men  and  half-starved  children  they 
carried  through  a  revolutionary  coup  d'etat.  They  have  quite  simply 
got  together  their  November-State  by  theft!  In  the  face  of  the  armies 
returning  wearied  from  the  front  these  thieves  have  still  posed  as  the 
saviours  of  the  Fatherland!  They  declared  the  Pacifist-Democratic 
Republic.  .  .  .'- 

Hitler  attacked  democracy  as  such,  considering  that  it  led  directly 
to  Bolshevism. 

...  At  all  times  it  has  been  the  principles  of  Democracy  which  have 
brought  peoples  to  ruin.  And  if  Germany  has  fallen  in  the  last  fourteen 
years  that  was  only  because  the  representation  of  the  principles  of 
Democracy  was  carried  to  such  lengths  that  its  fathers  and  representa- 
tives in  Germany  did  as  a  matter  of  fact  stand  even  below  the  average 
of  those  numbers  whose  supremacy  they  preach.  They  themselves  have 
been  so  mediocre,  so  small,  such  dwarfs  that  they  possess  no  right  what- 
ever to  raise  themselves  above  the  masses.  Never  has  any  system  or  any 
Government  left  its  place  in  a  more  melancholy,  more  miserable, 
more  mediocre  fashion  than  did  the  representatives  of  the  present 
system.' 

'  The  Road  to  Serfdom.  F.  A.  Hayek.  London.  1944.  Chap.  VIII. 
=  The  Speeches  of  Adolf  Hitler.  Ed.  by  N.  H.  Baynes.  2  Vols.  Oxford,  1942.  Vol.  I. 
p.  81. 

'  Hitler,  op.  cit.  p.  256. 


TWENTIETH     CENTURY     DICTATORSHIP  269 

Hitler  voiced  a  less  personal  criticism  of  democracy  in  deploring 
the  fate  of  a  country  in  which  the  government  represents  a  particular 
class. 

. .  .  for  then  the  regime  will  be  dependent  upon  the  wishes  of  individual 
economic  groups  and  will  thus  become  the  servant  of  one-sided 
economic  interests,  and  therefore  be  incapable  of  rising  above  the 
natural  economic  hopes  of  individuals  in  order  to  protect  the  justifiable 
interests  of  the  community.  But  a  Government  cannot  serve  the 
interests  of  employers  on  the  one  hand  or  of  workmen  on  the  other,  it 
cannot  serve  city  or  country,  trade  or  industry,  but  exclusively  the 
whole  people.  .  .  .' 

There  was  sufficient  substance  in  arguments  such  as  these  to  gain 
for  Hitler  a  measure  of  genuine  support  from  those  honestly  con- 
vinced that  he  was  right.  This  support  was  not  considerable,  it  is 
true,  until  after  the  economic  crisis  of  1929.  By  April,  1932,  never- 
theless, the  National  Socialists  polled  nearly  thirteen  and  a  half 
million  votes;  votes  for  a  party  leader  whose  avowed  aim  was  to  make 
himself  dictator.  It  is  incidentally  manifest  that,  had  Hitler  died  at 
that  point,  the  dictatorship  would  have  gone  to  someone  else.  Brun- 
ing  had  been  ruling  dictatorially,  for  that  matter,  from  1929  and  many 
assumed  that  this  conservative  reaction  would  continue.  M  think  it  is 
a  safe  prophecy'  wrote  H.  J.  Laski,  'that  the  Hitlerite  movement  has 
passed  its  apogee'.  This  prophecy  was  uttered  on  November  19th, 
1932."  Hitler  came  to  power  on  January  30th,  1933. 

The  notoriety  of  these  two  examples,  that  of  Italy  and  that  of 
Germany  should  not  persuade  us  to  base  any  conclusion  upon  those 
examples  alone.  It  would  not  be  true  to  say  that  all  social-democratic 
governments  end  in  dictatorship.  Nor  would  it  be  true  to  say  that 
dictatorships  arise  in  no  other  way.  As  against  that,  it  must  be  con- 
ceded that  the  tendency  exists  and  that  many  modern  dictatorships 
did  in  fact  arise  on  the  ruins  of  some  experiment  in  democracy. 
Dr.  Alfred  Cobban  recognises  this  in  his  study  of  dictatorship  and 
goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  'The  historic  task  of  many  parliamentary 
systems  appears  to  have  been  to  prepare  the  way  for  the  sovereignty 
of  a  dictator'.  He  continues: 

Dictatorship  in  modern  times  has  arisen  so  often  out  of  so-called 
democratic  institutions  that  it  seems  almost  as  though  it  could  not 
appear  where  there  had  been  no  previous  attempt  at  self-government; 
but  whereas  the  decline  of  traditional  authorities  is  an  invariable  pre- 
requisite of  dictatorship,  the  establishment  of  what  might  be  called  a 
democratic  government  is  not  always  to  be  found  among  the  events 
preceding  its  rise.  In  the  Greek  cities,  for  example,  we  often  seem  to 

'  Hitler,  op.  cit.  p.  453. 

■  Daily  Herald,  quoted  in  R.  Palme  Dutt.  op.  cit.  p.  124. 


270  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

pass  directly  from  the  overthrow  of  an  aristocracy  to  the  rule  of  a 
tyrant.  In  the  modern  world,  however,  a  positive  attempt  at  govern- 
ment by  the  people,  however  false  or  fleeting,  has  nearly  always  inter- 
vened between  the  fall  of  an  hereditary  monarchy,  and  the  establish- 
ment of  dictatorial  rule.^ 

But  if  the  examples  briefly  cited  afford  no  foundation  upon  which 
to  base  an  invariable  rule  governing  the  origin  of  dictatorship,  they 
are  equally  insufficient  to  prove  that  dictatorship  is  manifestly  harm- 
ful. Any  detailed  study  of  dictatorship  in  modern  history  must 
certainly  reveal  examples  to  the  contrary.-  Count  Carlo  Sforza  had  to 
admit  that  Porfirio  Diaz  governed  Mexico  well.^  Most  historians  will 
admit  that  there  was  much  to  say  for  Eleutherios  Venizelos  and  more  to 
say  for  Mustafa  Kemal.  Pilsudski,  Primo  de  Rivera,  Dollfuss  and 
Salazar  have  their  admirers  still.  And  even  in  the  instances  cited  of 
frankly  tyrannical  rule  it  is  not  always  clear  that  the  possible  alterna- 
tives would  not  have  been  worse.  In  a  comparison  of  tangible  achieve- 
ment many  dictatorships  might  be  found  to  have  a  better  record  than 
many  democracies.  The  main  objection  to  dictatorship  is  not  that  it  is 
inefficient  or  harsh  but  simply  that  it  cannot  last  more  than  a  lifetime 
and  that  its  termination  may  involve  civil  war.  The  final  criticism  of 
dictatorship  comes  not  from  its  enemies  but  from  its  defenders.  For 
the  more  fervent  they  are  in  a  dictator's  praise,  the  more  hopeless 
(they  imply)  will  the  situation  be  when  he  dies. 

We  must  not  forget  that  Mussolini  is  the  man  who  gave  himself 
entirely  to  the  great  cause,  animating  it  by  his  intelligence  and  his 
robust  military  temperament.  Fascism  does  not  make  an  idol  of  him, 
but  it  admires  him  for  his  political  correctness,  for  the  clearness  of  his 
outlook,  and  for  his  wisdom  in  action.  Above  all,  it  knows  that,  with- 
out Mussolini,  it  would  be  like  an  orphan  or  a  crippled  child,  and  that, 
without  his  vivifying  inspiration,  it  would  eventually  fall  under  the 
blows  of  a  victorious  enemy.* 

The  sternest  critic  of  fascism  can  add  little  to  that. 


'  Dictatorship,  Its  History  and  Theory.  Alfred  Cobban.  London,  1939.  p.  260. 

-  See  Dictatorship  in  the  Modern  World.  Ed.  by  G.  S.  Ford.  Minnesota,  1935-37. 
See  also  The  Story  of  dictatorship  from  the  earliest  times  till  to-dav.  E.  E.  Kellett.  London, 
1937. 

'  European  Dictatorships.  Count  Carlo  Sforza.  London,  1932. 

'  The  Fascist  Movement  in  Italian  Life.  P.  Gorgolini.  Trans,  by  M.  D.  Petre.  London, 
1923.  p.  213. 


CHAPTER    XXII 

The  Theory  of  Dictatorship 


THE  part  played  by  authors  in  shaping  the  pohtical  destinies  of 
mankind  has  often  been  exaggerated.  Few  dictators  have  seized 
power  with  a  weapon  in  one  hand  and  a  textbook  in  the  other.  What 
they  have  done,  however,  more  especially  in  recent  times,  has  been  to 
choose  from  the  available  literature  such  books  as  seemed  useful  in 
exhorting  the  faithful  or  persuading  the  public.  By  the  books  thus 
chosen  they  have  been  influenced  in  details,  at  least,  of  policy.  We 
shall  not  overestimate  that  influence  if  we  remember  that  the  dictator 
chose  the  book  from  among  a  dozen  others,  all  containing  less 
palatable  advice;  it  was  not  the  author  who  chose  the  dictator  from 
among  a  group  of  other  candidates.  Within  these  limits  it  is  clear 
that  authors  have  had  their  influence,  both  upon  dictators  and  upon 
the  peoples  they  ruled.  Not  all  dictators  have  been  illiterate. 
Mussolini,  while  remarking  that  'The  reality  of  experience  is  far 
more  eloquent  than  all  the  theories  and  doctrines  of  all  languages 
and  all  bookshelves',^  was  careful  to  emphasise  that  he  had  his 
cultural  side.  His  official  biographer  tells  us  of  him  that, 

As  a  young  man  he  devoted  long  hours  to  the  study  and  the  trans- 
lation of  German  authors,  such  as  Nietzche,  Schopenhauer,  Stirner, 
Weininger,  Marx,  Schiller,  Klopstock,  von  Platen,  Heine,  Goethe  and 
Hegel.  His  favourite  Italian  authors  are  Dante,  Carducci,  Oriani, 
Foscolo,  Pareto;  his  French  favourites  are  Sorel,  Blanqui,  Balzac, 
Le  Bon.  He  reads  and  re-reads  Plato,  and  likes  to  discuss  Phaedon's 
arguments  on  the  immortality  of  the  soul.  Occasionally  he  reviews 
some  new  publication.  He  listens  to  the  operas  of  Wagner,  Verdi,  and 
Puccini,  but  'T  adore  Beethoven',  he  says.  .  .  .- 

Had  he  in  fact  read  as  widely  as  this?  He  probably  had  in  so  far  as  a 
journalist  ever  reads  anything.  He  had  certainly  read  Sorel.  What  of 
the  other  dictators?  Bolivar  had  read  a  great  deal  and  so  no  doubt 
had  Venizelos.  Adolf  Hitler  had  read  within  the  narrow  range  of  his 
own  ideas,  being  willing  and  even  eager  to  compare  the  theories  of 
Chamberlain  with  those  of  Rosenberg.  He  had  read  Moller  van  den 
Briick's  book,  The  Third  Realm  (1922)  in  which  liberalismis  denounced 

^  The  official  life  of  Benito  Mussolini.  Georgia  P'lni.  Trans,  by  Luigi  Villari.  London, 
1939.  p.  229. 
'Ibid.  p.  241. 

271 


272  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

as  the  gospel  of  anarchy  and  Mberals  as  persons  who  consider  their 
own  interests,  never  those  of  society  or  the  State.  He  had  read  with 
interest  the  works  of  Schopenhauer  and  Carlyle's  biography  of 
Frederick  the  Great. ^  He  had  read  Machiavelli's  Prince.'^  He  is  more 
remarkable,  however,  in  having  written  and  published  his  bible  and 
manifesto  long  before  he  came  to  power.  As  it  contained  the  detailed 
programme  of  all  that  he  intended  to  do,  it  might  have  been  of  con- 
siderable value  to  the  Ministers  of  the  democratic  states.  He  evidently 
relied,  however,  upon  their  never  having  read  that  (or,  in  some  cases, 
anything  else) — or  upon  their  not  believing  it.  Events  were  to  justify 
his  confidence  but  it  is  an  aspect  of  his  career  which  is  surely  unique. 
Apart  from  that,  Mein  Ka m pf  gWcs  us  an  unusually  clear  and  frank 
picture  of  his  mental  development  as  also  of  his  mental  limitations. 
He  had  gained  inspiration  from  a  number  of  sources.  Studying  what 
he  had  read  we  know  also  by  what  authors  he  was  indirectly 
influenced.  We  can  trace  his  ideas  to  their  origin.  The  same  is  true  of 
Mussolini.  And,  having  so  traced  the  ancestry  of  modern  dictatorship 
we  must  agree  that  it  is  worthy  of  study. 

'Sorel  is  the  key  to  all  contemporary  thought'  wrote  Wyndham 
Lewis,^  and  Benedetto  Croce  regarded  Sorel  as  the  only  original 
socialist  thinker  other  than  Karl  Marx.  In  a  sense,  this  is  true,  but  to 
begin  with  Sorel  would  be  to  ignore  Nietzche,  which  hardly  seems 
possible.  For  whereas  socialism  will  normally  lead  to  dictatorship, 
whether  as  a  result  of  its  success  or  failure,  the  gospel  of  the  Super- 
man reaches  the  same  goal  by  a  different  route;  and  would  reach  it 
just  the  same  even  if  no  such  doctrine  as  socialism  had  ever  been 
evolved.  The  Superman  idea  was  to  some  extent  endemic  in  Germany 
and  can  be  traced  to  Fichte  (1762-1814)  and  even  to  Kant  (1724-1804). 
Kant  taught,  among  other  things,  that  the  united  will  of  the  people 
could  be  embodied  in  and  represented  by  a  single  individual.  The 
same  idea  appears  in  the  later  works  of  Fichte  (1762-1814).  This 
philosopher  held  that  the  progress  of  mankind  is  not  attributable  to 
peoples  as  a  whole  but  to  the  creative  genius  of  heroes  and  scholars — ■ 
'Heroes  who  left  their  age  far  behind  them,  giants  among  surrounding 
men  in  material  and  spiritual  power'.*  Intellectual  giants  such  as  these 
should  be  the  rulers  as  well  as  teachers  of  mankind.  They  should 
appoint  the  wisest  and  greatest  among  them  to  be  the  supreme 
dictator.  Fichte  was  rather  vague  about  the  process  of  election  and 
succession  but  concluded  hopefully  that  it  could  be  left  to  the  hand 
of  God.  'Sooner  or  later  a  man  will  arise  who  is  both  the  ruler  of  his 

'  See  Hitler's  Table  Talk.  Trans,  by  H.  R.  Trevor-Roper.  London,  1953.  pp.  XXIX, 
89,  358.  See  also  Mein  Kampf.  Adolf  Hitler.  2  vols.  London,  1939.  p.  256,  227. 

^  Hitler  Speaks.  Herman  Rauschning.  London,  1939.  p.  267. 

=  The  Art  of  being  Ruled.  Wyndham  Lewis.  London,  1926.  p.  128. 

*  From  Luther  to  Hitler,  the  History  of  Fascist-Nazi  political  philosophy.  W.  M. 
McGovern.  London,  1946.  p.  255. 


THE    THEORY    OF     DICTATORSHIP  273 

country  and  the  most  just  of  his  countrymen.  Such  a  man  will 
certainly  find  a  way  to  establish  the  succession  of  the  best\^  It  is  an 
optimistic  conclusion,  and  worldly  experience  would  suggest  that 
a  meeting  of  intellectuals,  summoned  to  elect  the  wisest  of  them  all, 
might  prove  more  acrimonious  than  Fichte  seems  to  anticipate. 

Another  exponent  of  the  German  love  of  authority  was  Hegel 
(1770-1831)  for  whom  the  State  was  the  Divine  Idea  as  it  exists  on 
earth.  He  regarded  Alexander,  Caesar  and  Napoleon  as  so  many 
unconscious  agents  of  the  World  Spirit,  meeting  their  death  only 
when  their  earthly  mission  had  been  fulfilled.  To  the  national  State 
of  the  nineteenth  century  Hegel  assigned  a  permanence  as  representing 
the  final  and  perfect  development  of  political  institutions,  created  by 
the  World  Spirit  working  through  man.  He  assigned  to  the  State, 
moreover,  an  importance  which  he  denied  to  the  individual.  The 
State  to  him  was  an  end  in  itself  and  had  'the  highest  right  over  the 
individual,  whose  highest  duty  in  turn  is  to  be  a  member  of  the  state'. ^ 
States  have  unequal  value,  however,  and  at  a  given  period  the  domi- 
nant idea  of  that  period  'is  embodied  in  a  dominant  people'.^  The 
mere  success  of  that  people  is  proof  of  their  being  more  in  accord 
with  the  World  Spirit  than  the  others.  Hegel  considered  that  mon- 
archy is  essential  to  good  government  and  achieves  its  perfection  in 
its  constitutional  form.  All  this  was  acceptable  doctrine  in  the  Prussia 
of  his  day  and  well  calculated  to  transform  the  professor  of  1818  into 
the  University  Rector  of  1830.  To  one  not  fascinated  (as  the  Germans 
were)  by  the  obscurity  of  his  diction,  Hegelian  dialectic  might  seem 
no  more  important  than  that.  Hegel,  however,  whether  profound  or 
not,  was  certainly  important,  if  only  through  the  historical  role  of 
his  disciples,  Karl  Marx,  Friedrich  Engels  and  Ferdinand  Lasalle.  It 
is  perhaps  significant  that  in  Hegel  the  arguments  for  dictatorship  and 
the  arguments  for  socialism  can  be  traced  to  a  common  source. 

In  the  development,  however,  of  the  doctrine  of  Superman,  it  is 
easy  to  exaggerate  the  part  played  by  German  professors  of  philo- 
sophy. It  is  true  that  potential  dictators,  like  Mussolini,  could  turn 
for  inspiration  to  Hegel.  But  they  would  gain  more  encouragement  by 
going  direct  to  the  source  of  Hegel's  inspiration:  the  Prussia  of 
Bismarck,  as  heir  to  the  Prussia  of  Frederick  the  Great.  In  so  far  as 
authors  were  to  provide  inspiration,  the  two  that  mattered  most  were 
probably  Thomas  Carlyle  and  Friedrich  Nietzche,  not  so  much 
because  of  their  profundity  as  because  of  their  literary  gifts.  The 
arguments  for  dictatorship  are  largely  emotional  and  aesthetic  and 
need  poetic  rather  than  purely  intellectual  expression.  Carlyle  was  too 
much  of  a  literary  man  to  spend  much  time  on  Kant  or  Fichte, 

^  Ibid.  p.  255. 
-  Ibid.  p.  300. 
^  Ibid.  p.  318. 


274  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

fervently  as  he  professed  to  admire  them  both.  Nor  was  he  himself  a 
systematic  thinker  on  political  problems.  His  views  are  implicit, 
rather,  in  what  he  had  to  write  about  the  French  Revolution,  Heroes 
and  Hero-Worship  and  Frederick  the  Great.  History  was  to  him  'the 
biography  of  great  men' — of  men  like  Luther,  Oliver  Cromwell  and 
Goethe.  He  had  nothing  to  say  in  praise  of  hereditary  monarchy, 
aristocracy  or  plutocracy,  but  neither  can  we  find  that  he  liked  democ- 
racy any  better.  He  could  see  in  it  nothing  but  'a  swift  transition 
towards  something  other  and  farther'  for  the  people  were,  after  all, 
'mostly  fools'.  Rule  must  be  vested  in  the  wise  few,  not  in  the  in- 
numerable and  foolish.  Over  the  few  he  would  set  a  single  ruler — a 
king.  He  wanted  to  see  '.  .  .  Hero-kings,  and  a  whole  world  not 
unheroic.  .  .  .'^  How  is  the  king  to  be  appointed?  Carlyle  does  not  say, 
but  his  expressed  admiration  for  Cromwell  and  Napoleon  is  at  least 
suggestive.  He  infers  that  the  hero  will  arise  to  meet  the  need  of  the 
day. 

From  a  bare  recital  of  this  lame  conclusion  it  might  well  be 
thought  that  Carlyle's  disciples  would  be  few.  But  his  strength,  his 
appeal  as  an  author,  does  not  lie  in  argument  but  in  a  picturesque 
violence.  He  does  not  so  much  preach  violence  as  exemplify  it 
attractively.  He  does  not  so  much  defend  dictatorship  as  describe  it 
in  terms  of  hero-worship.  How  does  he  define  heroism? 

The  Hero  is  he  who  lives  in  the  inward  sphere  of  things,  in  the  True, 
Divine,  and  Eternal,  which  exists  always,  unseen  to  most,  under  the 
Temporary,  Trivial:  his  being  is  in  that;  he  declares  that  abroad,  by 
act  or  speech  as  it  may  be,  in  declaring  himself  abroad.  His  life,  as  we 
said  before,  is  a  piece  of  the  everlasting  heart  of  Nature  herself:  all 
men's  life  is, — but  the  weak  many  know  not  the  fact,  and  are  untrue 
to  it,  in  most  times;  the  strong  few  are  strong,  heroic,  perennial, 
because  it  cannot  be  hidden  from  them.- 

Heroes,  as  thus  defined,  are  born  from  time  to  time,  and  it  is  upon 
these  that  all  depends. 

To  me.  .  .  .  'Hero-worship'  becomes  a  fact  inexpressibly  precious; 
the  most  solacing  fact  one  sees  in  the  world  at  present.  There  is  an 
everlasting  hope  in  it  for  the  management  of  the  world.  Had  all 
traditions,  arrangements,  creeds,  societies  that  men  ever  instituted, 
sunk  away,  this  would  remain.  The  certainty  of  Heroes  being  sent  us; 
our  faculty,  our  necessity,  to  reverence  Heroes  when  sent;  it  shines  like 
a  pole-star  through  smoke-clouds,  dust-clouds,  and  all  manner  of 
down-rushing  and  conflagration.^ 

Apart  from  prophets,  Carlyle  finds  that  Cromwell  fits  best  into  his 

'  McGovern.  op.  cil.  p.  200. 

-  Carlyle's  T/ieory  of  the  Hero.  B.  H.  Lehman.  North  Carolina,  1928.  p.  41.  See  also 
Carlyle  and  Hitler.  H.  J.  C.  Grierson.  Cambridge,  1933. 

^Sartor  Resartus:  Lectures  on  Heroes,  etc.  T.  Carlyle.  London,  1892.  pp.  336-337. 


THE     THEORY     OF     DICTATORSHIP  275 

idea  of  the  heroic  role.  He  cannot  summon  up  quite  the  same  feehng 
about  Napoleon. 

...  I  find  in  him  no  such  sincerity  as  in  Cromwell;  only  a  far  inferior 
sort.  No  silent  walking,  through  long  years,  with  the  Awful  Un- 
namable  of  this  Universe ;  'walking  with  God',  as  he  called  it ;  and  faith 
and  strength  in  that  alone:  latent  thought  and  valour,  content  to  lie 
latent,  then  burst-out  as  in  blaze  of  Heaven's  lightning!  Napoleon 
lived  in  an  age  when  God  was  no  longer  believed  ...  he  had  to  begin 
not  out  of  the  Puritan  Bible,  but  out  of  poor  Sceptical  Encyclo- 
pedies.  .  .  .^ 

This  last  disadvantage,  almost  excluding  Napoleon  from  the  ranks 
of  the  heroes,  was  shared  by  most  of  those  who  came  later  still  in 
history.  Carlyle,  contemporary  as  he  was  of  (say)  Abraham  Lincoln, 
could  find  no  heroes  in  his  own  day,  save  Goethe.  He  makes  it  clear, 
nevertheless,  in  Past  cifui Present  that  further  heroes  are  to  be  expected. 
More  than  that,  they  are  to  be  recognised.  Of  the  Hero,  he  writes 

...  His  place  is  with  the  stars  of  heaven.  ...  To  this  man  death  is  not  a 
bugbear;  to  this  man  life  is  aFready  as  earnest  and  awful,  and  beautiful 
and  terrible,  as  death. 

Not  a  May-game  is  this  man's  life;  but  a  battle  and  a  march,  a 
warfare  with  principalities  and  powers  ...  a  stern  pilgrimage  through 
burning  sandy  solitudes,  through  regions  of  thick-ribbed  ice.  He 
walks  among  men;  loves  men,  with  inexpressible  soft  pity — as  they 
cannot  love  him:  but  his  soul  dwells  in  solitude,  in  the  uttermost  parts 
of  Creation.  In  green  oases  by  the  palm-tree  wells,  he  rests  a  space;  but 
anon  he  has  to  journey  forward,  escorted  by  the  Terrors  and  the 
Splendours,  the  Archdemons  and  Archangels.  All  Heaven,  all  Pande- 
monium are  his  escort.  The  stars  keen-glancing,  from  the  Immensities, 
send  tidings  to  him;  the  graves,  silent  with  their  dead,  from  the 
Eternities.  Deep  calls  for  him  unto  Deep. 

Thou,  O  World,  how  wilt  thou  secure  thyself  against  this  man? 
...  He  is  thy  born  king,  thy  conqueror  and  supreme  lawgiver:  not  all 
the  guineas  and  cannons  .  .  .  under  the  sky  can  save  thee  from  him.  .  .  . 
Oh,  if  in  this  man,  whose  eyes  can  flash  Heaven's  lightning  .  .  .  there 
dwelt  not,  as  the  essence  of  his  very  being,  a  God's  justice,  human 
Nobleness,  Veracity  and  Mercy — 1  should  tremble  for  the  world. 
But  his  strength,  let  us  rejoice  to  understand,  is  even'this:  The  quantity 
of  Justice,  of  Valour  and  Pity  that  is  in  him.  To  hypocrites  and  tailored 
quacks  in  high  places,  his  eyes  are  lightning;  but  they  melt  in  dewy 
pity  softer  than  a  mother's  to  the  downpressed,  maltreated;  in  his 
heart,  in  his  great  thought,  is  a  sanctuary  for  all  the  wretched.  This 
world's  improvement  is  forever  sure.- 

Improvement  there  will  be  but  Carlyle  makes  it  clear  that  nothing 
of  this  sort  is  to  be  expected  of  a  Parliament. 

'  Carlyle.  op.  cit.  p.  363. 
'  /hid.  p.  297. 


276  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

A  Government  such  as  ours,  consisting  of  from  seven  to  eight 
hundred  Parliamentary  Talkers,  with  their  escort  of  Able  Editors  and 
Public  Opinion;  and  for  head,  certain  Lords  and  Servants  of  the 
Treasury,  and  Chief  Secretaries  and  others  who  find  themselves  at 
once  Chiefs  and  No-Chiefs,  and  often  commanded  rather  than 
commanding, — is  doubtless  a  most  complicate  entity,  and  none  of  the 
alertest  for  getting  on  with  business!^ 

Indeed,  he  turns  with  relief  from  Parliament  and  gazes  with  some 
respect  at  the  Horse  Guards.  By  comparison,  he  feels  that  the  War 
Office  has  achieved  something,  created  an  army  out  of  'runaway 
apprentices,  starved  weavers,  thievish  valets'.  The  soldier  offers  a 
kind  of  reality — 'He  is  a  fact  and  not  a  shadow'.  Then  he  continues: 

.  .  .  Most  potent,  effectual  for  all  work  whatsoever,  is  wise  planning, 
firm  combining  and  commanding  among  men.  Let  no  man  despair  of 
Government  who  looks  on  these  two  sentries  at  the  Horse-Guards, 
and  our  United-Service  Clubs!  1  could  conceive  an  Emigration 
Service,  a  Teaching  Service,  considerable  varieties  of  United  and 
Separate  Services,  of  the  due  thousands  strong,  all  effective  as  this 
Fighting  Service  is;  all  doing  their  work,  like  it; — which  work,  much 
more  than  fighting,  is  henceforth  the  necessity  of  these  New  Ages  we 
are  got  into!  Much  lies  among  us,  convulsively,  nigh  desperately 
struggling  to  be  bornr 

Carlyle  calls  for  a  military  efficiency  in  combating  Falsehood, 
Nescience,  Delusion,  Disorder  and  the  Devil.  He  asks  that  something 
of  the  British  competence  displayed  in  war  should  be  mobilised 
against  bad  drainage  and  dirt  and  soot.  Forty  soldiers,  he  points  out, 
will  disperse  the  largest  Spitalfields  mob.  Why  should  governmental 
energy  be  confined  to  that?  He  wants  government  to  'order  all  dingy 
Manufacturing  Towns  to  cease  from  their  soot  and  darkness' — a  plea 
still  being  made  by  others  a  century  later  and  with  as  little  result.  He 
demands  an  education  service  and  a  Captain-General  of  Teachers. 
He  wants  to  see  vigorous  action  and  doubts  whether  he  will  ever  see 
it  in  Parliament. 

it  is  at  that  point  that  he  tends  to  lose  the  sympathy  of  those  who 
are  otherwise  to  be  counted  among  his  British  admirers.  Dr.  G.  M. 
Trevelyan,  profoundly  shocked,  finds  that  Carlyle's  genius  declined 
after  1851. 

Fortunately  Carlyle's  later  and  worse  doctrines  in  dispraise  of 
Parliamentary  government  had  singularly  little  influence  on  the  Eng- 
lish, even  during  those  last  years  when  his  countrymen  so  much  revered 
him.  There  was  indeed  no  period  in  our  history  when  Parliamentary 
government  was  so  universally  acceptable,  and  despotism  more 
abhorred.^ 

'  Carlyle.  op.  cit.  p.  297. 

'  Ibid.  p.  275.  Past  and  Present. 

'  Carlyle,  an  Anthology.  G.  M.  Trevelyan.  London,  1953.  Introduction,  p.  5. 


THE     THEORY     OF     DICTATORSHIP  277 

This  may  well  be  true,  even  of  the  year  1843  when  he  was  writing 
Past  and  Present  and  long  before  his  genius  had,  in  Trevelyan's  view, 
deteriorated.  But  it  is  that  very  fact,  supposing  it  admitted,  that  makes 
his  criticism  more  striking.  It  is  not  the  unreformed  Parliament  he  is 
attacking,  nor  the  corruption  of  the  early  twentieth  century.  The 
Parliament  he  dismisses  as  hopelessly  inactive  and  useless  can  clearly 
be  taken  as  Parliament  at  its  best.  It  has  never,  surely,  had  a  com- 
parable prestige  before  or  since.  His  objection  to  Parliament  is  not 
that  it  is  particularly  corrupt  or  unrepresentative.  Nor  would  he  think 
the  better  of  it  were  Parliament  to  be  made  more  democratic.  His 
complaint  is  merely  that  it  does  not  work. 

Akin  to  Carlyle  in  some  ways  but  born  at  a  later  date  was  Friedrich 
Nietzche  (1844-1900).  If  the  other  apostles  of  violence  and  heroism 
were,  without  exception,  academic  and  sedentary,  Nietzche  was 
practically  an  invalid.  He  was  a  believer,  nevertheless,  in  the  German 
equivalent  of  Carlyle's  hero;  the  Superman.  In  his  own  words, 
'humanity  must  always  act  so  as  to  bring  men  of  genius  into  the 
world — this  is  its  task;  it  has  no  other'. ^  He  is  less  precise  about  the 
method  to  be  chosen  but  emphatic  that  it  can  be  done.  One  essential 
condition  for  the  cultivation  of  genius  is,  he  maintains,  the  institution 
of  slavery.  'The  misery  of  the  men  who  struggle  painfully  through  life 
must  be  increased  to  allow  a  small  number  of  Olympic  geniuses  to 
produce  great  works  of  art'.-  Another  essential  condition  is  the 
creation  of  an  elite,  a  superior  class  from  which  the  Superman  can 
spring  to  a  yet  greater  height.  There  is  therefore,  he  concluded,  a 
morality  of  masters  and  a  morality  of  slaves.  The  masters  despise 
weakness,  cowardice,  flattery  and  humility  but  respect  strength, 
audacity,  deceit  and  even  cruelty.  The  principles  of  conduct  main- 
tained among  themselves  are  not  applied  to  inferiors.  The  slaves  have 
a  different  morality.  They  detest  all  that  is  violent,  hard,  terrible  and 
destructive.  They  applaud  the  slave  virtues  of  pity,  benevolence, 
industry,  humility  and  patience.  Typical  products  of  the  slave 
mentality  are  the  Jews  who  have  equated  misery  with  virtue,  happiness 
with  vice.  Christianity,  adopting  the  Jewish  scale  of  values,  has 
exalted  the  weak,  consoling  them  with  tales  of  a  future  happiness. 
These  Christian  ideas,  spreading  widely,  have  represented  the  triumph 
of  the  slave  morality.  This  triumph  of  a  religion  of  suffering  has 
brought  Europe  to  a  state  of  decadence.  Mediocrities  rule  who  dare 
not  even  keep  order.  The  chief  symptom  of  decadence  is  democracy.  The 
fashion  is  to  demand  a  Society  of  equals,  without  masters  or  slaves, 
rich  or  poor,  rulers  or  subjects.  Nothing  is  to  be  left  but  the  herd. 
Only  the  Superman  can  finally  save  mankind  from  this  levelling 

'  Sclwpenliauer  as  Educator,  sec.  6.  Quoted  in  Tlie  Gospel  of  Superman.  H.  Lichlen- 
berger.  Trans,  by  J.  M.  Kennedy.  London,  1926. 
-  Lichtenberger.  op.  cit.  p.  61. 


278  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

tendency  but  it  is  the  task  of  men  as  they  are  to  recreate  the  conditions 
which  will  favour  the  Superman's  rise. 

The  gospel  of  Superman  did  not  appeal  to  all  but  it  did  appeal  to 
George  Bernard  Shaw,  the  non-democratic  socialist.  He  gave  expres- 
sion to  his  belief  in  the  play  Man  and  Superman,  first  published  in 
1903.^  In  a  sort  of  postscript  to  that  he  writes: — 

The  need  for  the  Superman  is,  in  its  most  imperative  aspect,  a 
political  one.  We  have  been  driven  to  Proletarian  Democracy  by  the 
failure  of  all  the  alternative  systems;  for  these  depended  on  the 
existence  of  Supermen  acting  as  despots  or  oligarchs  .  .  .  [who  were  not 
forthcoming].  .  .  . 

Now  we  have  yet  to  see  the  man  who,  having  any  practical  experience 
of  Proletarian  Democracy,  has  any  belief  in  its  capacity  for  solving 
great  political  problems,  or  even  for  doing  ordinary  parochial  work 
intelligently  and  economically.  Only  under  despotisms  and  oligarchies 
has  the  Radical  faith  in  'universal  suffrage"  as  a  political  panacea 
arisen.  It  withers  the  moment  it  is  exposed  to  practical  trial.  .  .  .'- 

His  preference  may  have  been  for  a  democracy  of  Supermen  but 
the  fact  remains  that  he  was  attracted  by  the  idea  of  dictatorship, 
going  so  far  as  to  express  a  guarded  approval  of  Mussolini.^  Views  of 
this  kind  were  virtually  echoed  by  two  of  his  outstanding  contem- 
poraries, Hilaire  Belloc  and  H.  G.  Wells.  Nor,  as  late  as  1928,  had 
Shaw  greatly  changed  his  views.  He  knew  that  dictatorship  has  its 
major  weakness  in  the  succession  difficulty  but  he  also  knew  that 
democratic  politicians  had  failed  and  failed  repeatedly  to  solve  even 
the  simplest  problems  of  the  age.  Universal  suffrage  he  regarded  as  a 
delusion  and  a  disappointment. 

At  all  events  the  bunch  of  carrots  which  for  a  whole  century  kept  the 
electoral  donkey  pursuing  it  has  now  been  overtaken  and  eaten  without 
giving  the  poor  beast  the  least  refreshment.  This  is  why  Parliament  has 
been  pushed  aside  by  Fascist  Leaders  in  Germany  and  Italy,  and 
reduced  in  Russia  to  a  congress  which  meets  at  long  intervals  to  ratify 
reforms,  but  has  no  effective  hand  in  initiating  them.^ 

He  also  saw  that  dictators  could  and  did  succeed  where  parliaments 
had  failed. 

.  .  .  All  your  wouldbe  dictator  has  to  do  is  to  deal  with  fools  according 
to  their  folly  by  giving  them  plenty  of  the  stuff  they  like  to  swallow 
whilst  he  sets  to  work  energetically  on  reforms  that  appeal  to  every- 
one's commonsense  and  comfort,  and  stops  the  more  obvious  abuses 

'  Man  and  Superman.  A  Comedy  and  a  P/iilosop/iv.  By  Bernard  Shaw.  London,  1931. 
See  pp.  184-5. 

=  Shaw.  op.  cit.  p.  184. 

^  See  Dutt,  R.  P.  George  Bernard  Shaw.  London,  1951. 

^  The  Intelligent  Woman  s  Guide  to  Socialism,  Capitalism,  Sovietism  and  Fascism. 
Bernard  Shaw.  London,  1949.  p.  476. 


THE     THEORY     OF     DICTATORSHIP  279 

of  the  existing  order.  His  first  step  will  be  to  abolish  all  the  little 
councils  of  elderly  local  tradesmen.  ...  He  will  substitute  energetic 
and  capable  young  prefects  with  absolute  powers  from  himself  to  clean 
up  the  provinces;  and  by  this  he  will  not  only  effect  a  speedy  improve- 
ment in  local  government,  but  will  do  it  in  a  way  which  exactly  fits  in 
with  the  popular  desire  to  get  rid  of  a  lot  of  vulgar  old  tradesmen  and 
employ  some  superior  person  to  set  things  right. ^ 

He  emphasises  that  these  and  more  ruthless  measures  will  be 
popular. 

.  .  .  When  the  Leader  speaks  of  the  Liberals  and  their  bag  of  rights  and 
liberty  with  masterful  contempt,  and  calls  for  discipline,  order,  silence, 
patriotism  and  devotion  to  the  State  of  which  he  is  the  embodiment, 
the  people  respond  enthusiastically  and  leave  the  Liberals  to  rot  in 
the  penal  islands,  concentration  camps,  and  prisons  into  which  they 
have  been  flung.  .  .  .- 

Fascism  also  gets  rid  of  the  absurdity  of  a  senselessly  obstructive 
Party  Opposition,  resulting  in  parliaments  where  half  the  members  are 
trying  to  govern  and  the  other  half  trying  to  prevent  them.  .  .  .^ 

In  the  final  analysis,  Bernard  Shaw's  main  objection  to  Fascism  is 
that  it  is  not  Socialism — although  (as  he  admits)  closely  resembling 
it.  He  considers  that  Fascism  is  doomed  simply  because  it  is  capital- 
istic. He  considers  that  liberal  democracy  is  also  doomed  and  for  the 
same  reason.  In  the  meanwhile,  of  the  two  evils,  he  prefers  Fascism 
'in  so  far  as  it  produces  a  United  Front  with  a  public  outlook'. 

If  Fascist  or  Nazi  ideas  could  be  as  attractive  as  this  to  a  great 
Irishman,  who  finally  condemned  them  as  childish,  they  naturally 
appealed  more  forcibly  to  people  with  wilder  emotions  and  fewer 
brains.  Outstanding  among  these,  and  wielding  considerable  influence 
in  Germany,  was  Houston  Stewart  Chamberlain  (1855-1926),  an 
Englishman  who  went  abroad  for  his  health,  first  to  Austria  and  then 
in  1900,  to  Germany.  His  principal  work  was  entitled  ^The  Foundations 
of  the  Nineteenth  Century',  and  was  published  in  1899.  Chamberlain 
took  some  of  his  nonsensical  doctrines  about  racial  purity  and  in- 
equality from  Gobineau  (1816-1882)  but  is  more  interesting,  or  more 
to  our  present  purpose,  when  he  discusses  democracy. 

To  tell  the  truth,  all  nations  of  the  earth  are  sick  and  tired  of  parlia- 
ments; tired  of  the  sacred  general  franchise;  tired  of  the  ever-running 
flow  of  oratory,  which  threatens  to  drown  the  whole  of  the  civilised 
world,  as  in  a  new  Deluge. 

He  asks  what  part  the  people  should  play  in  government  and 
answers  his  question  thus: — 

'  Shaw.  op.  cit.  p.  479. 
-  Ihid.  p.  480. 
=■ /6/W.  p.  481. 


280  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

The  people  will  be  the  unconscious  root,  supplying  nutriment,  the 
reserve  of  forces,  and  will  then  prove  themselves  as  efficient  as  now  in 
the  German  army.  As  soon  as  the  people  are  brought  to  silence,  their 
voice  is  most  distinctly  heard.  Their  speech  is  not  dialectic,  but  some- 
thing which  far  surpasses  it.  A  monarch  may  be  represented,  a  class,  a 
profession — a  people  cannot  be  represented.  The  people  are  nature, 
and  a  Mr.  Muller  or  Mr.  Meyer  is  as  little  able  to  represent  them  as  he 
is  to  represent  a  mountain  or  a  wood.  This  pretended  representation  of 
the  people  does  nothing  but  destroy  the  real  vigour  of  the  people  and 
cause  a  chaos.  It  causes  restlessness  and,  therefore,  anxiety.  It  consumes 
every  root  fibre  which  would  have  served  to  sustain  life.  It  stultifies  by 
its  debate  and  nullifies  all  great  plans  by  its  disputes.  In  addition  to  this, 
like  a  monstrous  dragon,  it  swallows  mountains  of  strength  and 
oceans  of  time,  all  of  which  are  lost  for  ever  for  the  life  of  the  nation. 
The  people  naturally  recognise  and  foster  great  characters;  parliament 
invariably  refuses  to  tolerate  any  talent  that  arises  above  medi- 
ocrity. .  .  .^ 

Central  to  the  groups  of  thinkers  who  had  come  to  regard  liberal 
democracy  with  contempt  was  Richard  Wagner  (1813-1883).  If 
Strauss  may  be  said  to  have  composed  the  background  music  for  the 
Holy  Alliance,  Wagner  certainly  provided  the  musical  accompani- 
ment for  the  drama  of  dictatorship.  It  was  he  too  who  was  responsible 
for  those  cavorting  Nibelungs  and  Valkyries  which  played  what  seems 
to  be  (at  first  sight)  an  unnecessarily  prominent  role  in  the  politics  of 
the  Third  Reich.  He  was  central  to  this  school  of  thought  in  that  he 
was  for  years  a  close  friend  of  Nietzche,  who  wrote  in  his  defence;  a 
composer  greatly  admired  by  Bernard  Shaw;-  and  the  father-in-law 
of  Houston  Stewart  Chamberlain.  Wagner  was  sufficiently  active  in 
the  Dresden  insurrection  of  1848-49  to  suffer  years  of  exile  in 
Switzerland.  He  was  sufficiently  prolific  to  leave  behind  him  ten 
volumes  of  published  prose.  It  was,  nevertheless,  his  music  which 
had  the  greater  effect  in  furthering  the  emotional  cause,  in  stilling 
the  voice  of  reason,  in  heightening  the  operatic  effect  of  violence  as 
its  own  excuse.  Adolf  Hitler  could  find  in  Tarmhduser  or  Lohengrin 
any  inspiration  he  might  fail  to  draw  from  mountain  scenery  or  tea- 
time  buns.  The  mad  King  Ludwig  of  Bavaria  had  pensioned  Wagner 
in  the  first  place  and  a  later  Bavarian  hero  was  to  be  carried  away 
more  fatally  by  the  dramatic  force  of  drums  and  wind.  Adolf  Hitler 
first  became  obsessed  with  Wagner  in  his  Vienna  days  when  he  saw 
Tristan  thirty  or  forty  times;  ever  afterwards  maintaining  that  this  is 
Wagner's  masterpiece.  His  first  contact  with  the  Wagner  family  was 

'  The  Ravings  of  a  Renegade;  being  the  War  Essays  of  Houston  Stewart  Chamberlain. 
Trans,  by  G.  H.  Clarke.  London.  1915. 

-See  Major  Critical  Essays.  The  Perfect  Wagnerite.  G.  B.  Shaw.  London,  1948. 
pp.  187,  244,  245.  Wagner,  originally  a  friend  of  Bakunin,  was  much  influenced  by 
Schopenhauer's  treatise  on  'The  world  as  Will  and  Representation'  in  which  instinct 
and  reason  are  contrasted.  Wagner  also  hated  the  Jews. 


THE     THEORY     OF     DICTATORSHIP  281 

indirectly  through  the  son-in-law — ('Houston  Stewart  Chamberlain 
wrote  to  me  so  nicely  when  I  was  in  prison') — but  he  evidently  met 
Wagner's  widow,  Cosima,  for  the  first  time  in  1925.  He  had  just 
emerged  from  jail  and  went  to  stay  with  Frau  Bechstein  at  Bayreuth 
for  the  Festival.  The  Wagners,  Cosima  and  Siegfried,  lived  a  few 
yards  away,  and  a  friendship  began,  with  drives  into  the  Franconian 
mountains  and  evenings  at  the  opera  with  Cleving  at  his  best  in 
Parsifal.  'I  was  also  present'  said  Hitler  in  1942,  'at  the  Ring  and  the 
Meistersinger.  The  fact  that  the  Jew  Schorr  was  allowed  to  sing  the 
role  of  Wotan  had  the  effect  of  a  profanation  on  me.  Why  couldn't 
they  have  got  Rode  from  Munich?'  Despite  this  shock,  the  visit  was 
a  success.  Hitler  remained  on  Christian-name  terms  with  the  Wagners, 
remarking  afterwards  that  it  was  Cosima's  merit  'to  have  created  the 
link  between  Bayreuth  and  National  Socialism'.  The  link  was 
certainly  there.  Hitler  owned  several  of  Wagner's  original  scores  and 
would  sigh,  on  occasion,  'What  joy  each  of  Wagner's  works  has 
given  me!'^ 

It  is  easy  to  see  what  is  absurd  in  Wagnerian  politics,  even  when 
related  to  the  portentous  conclusions  of  German  philosophers,  stated 
with  all  the  violence  of  the  sedentary,  the  bookish  and  the  sick.  It  is 
easier  still,  however,  to  forget  that  theories  generally  false  may  be 
based  on  some  beliefs  that  are  perfectly  true.  And  the  truth  which 
lurks  amid  the  Fascist  falsities  is  that  liberal  democracy  is  dreary, 
deadening  and  dull.  That  is  not  a  theory  but  a  fact;  and  when 
Chamberlain  said  that  people  are  sick  and  tired  of  parliaments,  he 
was  telling  the  literal  truth.  The  spectacle  of  drab  little  men  moving 
amendments  to  drab  little  proposals  is  seldom  inspiring.  It  lacks  the 
pageantry  which  the  normal  human  being  needs.  The  enthusiast  can 
explain  its  significance  to  schoolboys  and  may  even  gain  their 
reluctant  assent.  But  the  pageant  of  a  coronation  needs  no  explana- 
tion. The  critic  who  grumbles  about  the  cost  is  answered  not  by 
arguments  but  by  the  clatter  of  the  cavalry,  the  thunder  of  the  psalm, 
the  glitter  of  the  sword  blades  and  the  spine-shivering  shrillness  of  the 
trumpets'  chord.  Words  are  worse  than  useless.  The  thing  explains 
itself.  And  that  is  exactly  what  the  average  modern  legislature  fails  to 
do.  Its  proceedings  are  usually  as  colourless  as  its  ideas.  Round  its 
prim  procedure  there  hangs  the  slight  but  unmistakable  smell  of 
political  corruption.  Its  atmosphere  is  heavy  with  failure;  failure  to 
achieve  anything,  failure  to  agree  and  failure  even  to  arouse  any 
public  interest  in  what  has  been  attempted. 

'  See  Hitler's  Table  Talk.  Trans,  and  edited  by  H.  R.  Trevor-Roper.  London,  1953. 
pp.  147,  240-242  and  283.  Oswald  Spengler,  whom  Hitler  consulted  before  the  forrner 
died  in  1936  saw  in  Tristan  the  finale  of  western  music.  He  also  points  out  the  affinity 
between  Wagner  and  the  painter,  Manet  'which  Baudelaire  with  his  unerring  flair  for 
the  decadent  detected  at  once'.  See  The  Decline  of  the  West.  Oswald  Spengler.  2  vols. 
Trans,  by  C.  F.  Atkinson.  New  York,  1947.  Vol.  I.  p.  292. 


282  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

Among  the  nineteenth-twentieth  century  thinkers  who  most 
clearly  perceived  this  failure  was  Georges  Sorel  (1847-1922).  Unlike 
many  political  theorists,  he  had  some  practical  experience;  not  of 
politics  but  of  roads  and  bridges.^  As  a  Frenchman  and,  after  his 
retirement,  a  Parisian  by  choice,  he  was  privileged  to  contemplate 
perhaps  the  least  inspiring  of  the  uninspired  republics.  His  views 
veered  from  socialism  to  syndicalism,  from  royalism  to  anarchy.  He 
can  be  quoted  in  defence  of  many  political  creeds.  The  syndicalists, 
whose  prophet  he  once  was,  bequeathed  to  Mussolini  a  single  (and 
useful)  constructive  idea;  that  of  providing  for  the  political  rep- 
resentations of  trades  and  professions  rather  than  of  areas  or  places. 
But  that  is  not  Sorel's  importance  in  the  present  context.  His  Reflec- 
tions on  Violence,  which  first  appeared  in  1906,  emphasise  the  need 
for  an  irrational  and  romantic  heroism.  Among  the  first  to  apply 
psychology  to  politics,  he  held  that  a  political  movement  needs  not  a 
rational  creed  but  a  myth.  Without  a  mythology  it  cannot  succeed. 
He  dismissed  the  socialism  of  Sidney  Webb  as  the  typical  product  of 
a  second-class  mind.-  He  rejected  statistical  arguments  and  called  for 
a  myth,  defined  as  'a  body  of  images  capable  of  evoking  sentiment 
instinctively'.^  His  chosen  myth  was  that  of  the  General  Strike,  con- 
sidered as  a  political  panacea.  He  rejected  the  myth  of  the  Barricades, 
observing  sorrowfully  that  'Civil  war  has  become  very  difficult  since 
the  discovery  of  the  new  firearms,  and  since  the  cutting  of  rectilinear 
streets  in  the  capital  towns'.  This  was  a  natural  reflection  for  a 
revolutionary  Parisian  living  in  the  Paris  replanned  by  Haussmann  for 
Napoleon  ill,  and  his  general  strike  was  a  poor  substitute  for  some- 
thing better.  His  own  chosen  myth  came  to  little  in  France  and  to  less 
in  the  England  of  1926.  But  the  idea  of  the  Myth  has  taken  root. 

Experience  shows  that  the  framing  of  a  future,  in  some  indeter- 
minate time,  may,  when  it  is  done  in  a  certain  way,  be  very  effective, 
and  have  very  few  inconveniences;  this  happens  when  the  anticipa- 
tions of  the  future  take  the  form  of  those  myths,  which  enclose  with 
them  all  the  strongest  inchnations  of  a  people,  of  a  party  or  of  a  class, 
inclinations  which  recur  to  the  mind  with  the  insistence  of  instincts  in 
all  the  circumstances  of  life;  and  which  give  an  aspect  of  complete 
reality  to  the  hopes  of  immediate  action  by  which,  more  easily  than  by 
any  other  method,  men  can  reform  their  desires,  passions,  and  mental 
activity.* 

'  Bernard  Shaw  very  rightly  observes  that  V/agncr  also  had  practical  experience. 
'It  is  possible'  he  observes  'to  learn  more  of  the  world  by  producing  a  single  opera,  or 
even  conducting  a  single  orchestral  rehearsai,  than  by  ten  years  reading  in  the  library 
of  the  British  Museum'.  Wagner  is  thus  contrasted  favourably  with  Karl  Marx.  Sec 
Shaw.  op.  (It.  p.  244. 

'  Ri'llections  on  Violence.  Georges  Sorel.  Trans,  by  T.  E.  Hulme.  London,  1915.  See 
also  Tlie  Mvtii  of  the  Stale.  Ernst  Cassirer.  Yale,  1946. 

"  ll)id.  p.  75. 

'  IhUL  p.  133. 


THE     THEORY     OF     DICTATORSHIP  283 

Later  in  the  same  book  Sorel  asks  what  motive  can  inspire  the 
worker  in  a  sociaHst  state,  what  motive  comparable  with  that  which 
inspires  a  soldier  in  battle. 

Economic  progress  goes  far  beyond  the  individual  life,  and  profits 
future  generations  more  than  those  who  create  it;  but  does  it  give 
glory?  Is  there  an  economic  epic  capable  of  stimulating  the  en- 
thusiasm of  the  workers?^ 

If  no  such  epic  has  been  found  in  modern  times,  it  is  certainly  not 
from  any  lack  of  energy  in  the  search.  From  Mussolini's  Pontine 
Marshes  to  Stalin's  films  about  increased  production  we  have  seen 
the  myth  triumphant  over  fact  or  even  probability.  Sorel  believed  not 
in  laboured  reasoning  but  in  mythology  and  resulting  action.  For 
representative  assemblies  he  had  no  use  at  all."^ 

Government  by  all  the  citizens  has  never  been  anything  but  a 
fiction ;  but  this  fiction  was  the  last  word  of  democratic  science.  No  one 
has  ever  been  able  to  justify  this  singular  paradox  according  to  which 
the  vote  of  a  chaotic  majority  is  rhade  to  appear  to  be  what  Rousseau 
calls  the  general  will  which  cannot  err.  In  spite  of  their  distrust  of  the 
Utopians  of  the  eighteenth  century,  socialist  writers  often  reproduce 
Rousseau's  idea:  they  say  that  the  state  will  no  longer  exist  because, 
classes  having  disappeared,  there  will  no  longer  be  oppression  in 
society  and  that  then  the  public  administration  will  truly  represent  the 
whole  of  the  citizens.  These  affirmations  are  without  a  vestige  of 
proof.  .  .  ? 

His  dislike  of  parliamentary  government  was  intensified  by  the 
First  World  War  and  he  wrote  bitterly  of  the  Allies'  treatment  of 
Germany  and  Italy. 

I  am  only  an  old  man,  whose  life  is  at  the  mercy  of  the  smallest 
accident;  but  may  I  before  descending  into  the  grave,  witness  the 
humiliation  of  the  arrogant  bourgeois  democracies  today  so  cynically 
triumphant!* 

It  is  a  matter  for  doubt  whether  his  wish  was  granted  him.  Dying 
in  1922,  he  had  not  lived  long  enough  to  see  the  humiliation  of 
Munich.  He  had,  however,  witnessed  the  Washington  Naval  Treaty 
of  1921,  the  beginning  of  a  process  which  would  lead  in  the  end,  if 
not  to  Munich,  at  least  to  the  fall  of  Singapore. 

Sorel  left  behind  him  not  only  his  works  but  his  disciples.  Vilfredo 
Pareto  survived  him,  it  is  true,  for  only  a  year,  but  Sorel's  thought  is 
reflected  in  the  works  of  Marinetti,  Palmieri  and  the  other  Fascist 

'  Sorel,  op.  cit.  p.  293. 

-  See  From  Luther  to  Hitler.  W.  M.  McGovern.  London,  1946.  p.  432. 
"^  Georges  Sorel,  Prophet  without  Honor.  A  study  in  anti-inteliectualism.    Richard 
Humphrey.  Harvard,  1951.  p.  70. 
'  Humphrey,  op.  cit.  p.  21. 


284  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

apologists.  Nor  is  it  absent  in  the  works  of  Benedetto  Croce,  who 
points  out  that  the  scope  of  the  Myth  in  pohtics  has  been  widened  by 
elementary  education: 

Popular  education,  which  the  liberal  nineteenth  century  enthusi- 
astically inaugurated,  has  not  fulfilled  the  hope  of  making  the  masses 
politically  intelligent.  They  have  become  more  the  prey  of  emotional 
propaganda,  drawing  its  strength  from  passion  and  imagination.  .  .  . 
What  the  people  want  is  not  truth  but  some  myth  which  flatters  their 
feelings,  and  the  first  and  unwelcome  truth  they  need  to  be  taught  is  to 
distrust  the  demagogues  who  excite  and  intoxicate  them.  .  .  .' 

Above  all,  we  know  of  Sorel's  influence  upon  Mussolini,  who 
said  in  1932: 

Every  revolution  creates  new  forms,  new  myths  and  new  rites  and 
the  would-be  revolutionist,  while  using  old  traditions,  must  refashion 
them.  He  must  create  new  festivals,  new  gestures,  new  forms  which 
will  themselves  become  traditional." 

By  1932  the  myth  had  indeed  been  established  in  the  world.  It  was 
not,  however,  the  myth  which  Sore!  had  wished  to  see  installed.  It 
was  the  myth  of  the  all-seeing,  all-knowing  and  all-powerful  Leader; 
the  dominant  political  theme  of  the  twentieth  century.  We  have 
seen  democracy  turn  into  dictatorship  and  we  have  seen  some  dic- 
tatorships collapse  under  the  impact  of  military  defeat.  There  are 
many  to-day  who  expect  to  see  these  dictatorships  replaced  by 
democracy.  Neither,  however,  in  historical  example  nor  in  political 
theory  can  we  find  much  reason  to  think  this  probable.  After  a 
dictator  we  should  rather  expect  to  see  a  King. 


My  Philosophy.  Benedetto  Croce.  Trans,  by  E.  F.  Carritt.  London,  1949.  p.  90. 
Quoted  in  McGovern.  op.  cit.  p.  549. 


CHAPTER    XXIII 

Dictatorship  in  Decay 


NOT  all  the  arguments  for  dictatorship  are  either  dishonest, 
romantic  or  false.  We  have  seen  what  arguments  have  been 
used  and  those  of  substance  can  evidently  be  reduced  to  three.  They 
are  worth  re-stating  now.  First  of  these  is  the  argument  which  springs 
from  the  fact  of  genius.  Persons  with  what  appears  to  be  divine 
inspiration — Gautama,  Joan  of  Arc  or  Gandhi — are  relatively  few 
in  the  story  of  mankind.  In  retrospect  it  is  often  found  that  they  were 
uncannily  right  when  everyone  else  was  wrong.  We  feel,  looking  back, 
that  the  people  among  whom  they  lived  would  have  fared  better  had 
they  done  exactly  what  they  were  told  to  do.  Is  it  not  the  sensible 
course  to  do  what  genius  says  should  be  done?  Would  not  the  Greeks 
have  done  well  to  make  Socrates  their  leader?  Would  not  the  French 
have  done  better  to  instal  St.  Joan  in  supreme  power?  Were  not  the 
people  of  India  wise  to  obey  Gandhi  as  much  as  they  did,  and  would 
they  not  have  been  wiser  still  had  they  obeyed  him  even  more 
implicitly  ?  To  believers  in  God  there  can  be  nothing  very  unreasonable 
in  obeying  those  whom  God  has  inspired.  Non-believers,  on  the  other 
hand,  are  usually  ready  to  admit  the  fact  that  genius  exists.  If  genius 
is  known  and  admitted  in  music  and  painting — if  John  Sebastian 
Bach  and  Michaelangelo  had  genius — why  should  we  question  that 
there  may  be  genius  too  in  politics?  Christopher  Wr^n  was  apt  to 
differ  from  his  contemporaries  in  matters  of  architecture  and  engin- 
eering, and  events  have  almost  invariably  proved  that  he  was  right  and 
they  were  wrong.  Are  there  no  statesmen  as  prescient,  and  if  there  are, 
should  we  not  entrust  the  supreme  authority  to  them? 

To  this  argument  many  would  reply  that  the  genius  may,  by 
persuasion,  gain  acceptance  of  his  ideas,  achieving  by  example  and 
argument  what  we  do  not  allow  him  to  achieve  by  force.  To  this 
Adolf  Hitler  has  the  answer: 

Is  it  an  indispensable  quality  in  a  statesman  that  he  should  possess 
a  gift  of  persuasion  commensurate  with  the  statesman's  ability  to 
conceive  great  political  measures  and  carry  them  through  into 
practice?  .  .  . 

What  shall  the  statesman  do  if  he  does  not  succeed  in  coaxing  the 
parliamentary  multitude  to  give  its  consent  to  his  policy?' 

'  Hitler,  op.  cit.  p.  79. 

285 


286  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

As  an  answer  this  is  sufficient.  Vision  and  strength  are  not  neces- 
sarily accompanied  by  the  arts  of  the  demagogue.  A  genius  apt  for 
command  cannot  always  stoop  to  persuade.  More  than  that,  the 
serene  certainty  of  the  man  of  vision  is  not  always  easy  to  convey. 
The  more  clearly  he  can  see  what  has  to  be  done,  the  fewer  reasons 
he  has  to  convince  anyone  else.  The  conclusion  most  easily  explained 
to  others  is  the  conclusion  reached  by  long  and  exhaustive  elimina- 
tion. The  conclusion  most  difficult  to  explain  is  the  one  reached  in  a 
flash — by  a  stroke,  in  fact,  of  genius.  Not  every  man  of  genius  has 
both  the  flash  of  inspiration  and  the  wit  to  invent,  afterwards,  the 
argument  which  even  the  densest  colleague  will  accept. 

The  second  argument  for  dictatorship  is  that  any  great  political 
achievement  is  a  work  of  art  and  that  a  work  of  art  implies  an  artist. 
This  is  most  obvious  in  architecture  and  planning.  To  re-plan  the 
centre  of  London  as  Wren  wished  to  re-plan  it  after  the  Fire  of 
London  implied, for  success,  a  genius  invested  with  dictatorial  powers. 
The  genius  was  available  but  the  dictator  was  not.  Historians  were 
apt  to  wonder  why  nothing  was  done  but  need  wonder  no  longer 
since  they  have  seen  exactly  the  same  opportunity  missed  again  in 
exactly  the  same  way.  Napoleon  111  had  the  power  denied  to  Charles 
II  and  George  VI,  and  modern  Paris  is  the  result.  Wherever  there  is  a 
city,  a  cathedral  or  a  palace  of  monumental  character  and  seemingly 
inevitable  design,  its  plan  is  normally  the  concept  of  a  single  human 
brain.  It  is,  in  short,  a  work  of  art  and  subject  to  the  same  conditions 
in  the  making  as  apply  to  a  painting,  a  statue,  a  concerto  or  an  ode. 
Things  of  this  kind  are  seldom  the  result  of  collaboration,  rarely 
affected  by  a  majority  vote,  and  never  safely  attributable  to  a 
committee.  The  artist  normally  signs  his  work,  accepting  full  res- 
ponsibility for  it.  And  when  he  leaves  out  the  signature  it  is  often 
because  none  is  needed.  No  seventeenth  century  general  had  to  be 
told  that  a  fortress  had  been  planned  by  Vauban;  he  could  see  that  for 
himself.  A  modern  art  critic  will  as  readily — if  not  quite  as  certainly — 
— attribute  a  canvas  to  Rembrandt  or  Vermeer. 

Between  the  planning  of  a  palace  and  the  founding  of  a  city  the 
difference  is  only  one  of  degree.  The  founder  of  a  city  may  well  be  the 
founder  of  the  state  or  colony  of  which  it  is  to  be  the  capital.  It  is 
natural  for  him  to  plan  the  streets  and  bridges,  the  boundaries  and 
the  roads.  He  will  reserve  the  parks  and  name  the  hills.  Then  he  will 
deal  with  the  drainage  and  water  supply,  laying  down  what  is  to 
constitute  an  offence  against  public  health.  He  will  define  the  limits  of 
the  harbour  and  decide  what  dues  shall  be  paid  for  anchorage  or 
ballast.  This  will  compel  him  to  decide  whether  the  local  and  harbour 
authorities  are  to  be  distinct;  if  they  are,  he  must  draft  a  constitution 
for  each;  and  indeed  a  code  of  laws.  But  laws  will  require  amendment 


DICTATORSHIP     IN     DECAY  287 

or  repeal  from  time  to  time,  which  implies  a  legislature.  They  must 
be  enforced,  which  implies  an  executive.  ...  At  what  point  in  this 
scheme  of  work  should  the  single  artist,  with  his  vision  of  the  com- 
pleted whole,  give  place  to  a  committee  representative  of  the  different 
interests?  The  answer  is  not  obvious,  and  the  founder  of  a  colony 
might  be  forgiven  for  regarding  the  whole  thing  as  a  single  work  of 
art,  and  himself  the  artist  whose  signature  it  will  bear  to  all  eternity. 
Should  he  later,  however,  rise  to  high  rank  in  a  country  already  long 
established  but  in  a  state  of  disorder  and  chaos,  he  will  not  think 
that  the  problems  to  be  solved  are  markedly  different  from  those  of 
the  new  colony  he  formerly  ruled  with  such  success.  The  canvas  may 
be  old  but  his  skill  has,  if  anything,  matured.  Given  a  free  hand,  he 
could  make  something  of  it  yet.  If  the  state  is  to  be  a  work  of  art, 
there  must  be  an  artist:  and  an  artist  is  essentially  a  dictator. 

The  third  argument  for  dictatorship  is  that  a  swift  decision,  one 
way  or  the  other,  is  often  preferable  to  an  endless  argument.  This  was 
recognised  from  an  early  period  at  sea,  where  the  oldest  law  still  in 
force  runs  thus: —  '//;  a  ship  one  man  is  master'.  It  is  nowhere  stated 
that  the  one  man  is  the  wisest,  the  oldest  or  the  most  experienced.  All 
that  we  know  about  him  is  that  he  is  one,  the  master;  and  not  a 
committee.  Committees  at  sea  have  been  tried  but  results  have 
shown  that  it  is  better  to  decide  on  something,  on  anything,  rather 
than  hold  a  debate  as  to  which  policy  is  best.  When  a  vessel  is  on  a 
dangerous  lee  shore,  safety  may  lie  in  beating  out  to  sea  or,  alterna- 
tively, in  dropping  anchor  where  she  is.  There  may  be  cogent  argu- 
ments to  put  forward  in  support  of  either  policy.  There  may  well  be 
two  schools  of  thought,  and  possibly  a  third  group  eager  to  find  a 
compromise  acceptable  to  both.  But  long  and  sad  experience  has 
shown  that  a  prolonged  discussion  would  be  unwise.  It  :s  better  to  let 
the  master  decide  and  compel  the  rest  to  obey.  For  the  master's 
decision  (irrespective  of  his  abihty)  has  a  fifty  per  cent  chance  of  being 
right,  while  the  delay  caused  by  an  argument  has  a  hundred  per  cent 
chance  of  being  wrong. 

What  is  obviously  true  at  sea  is  almost  as  manifestly  true  in  a  time 
of  crisis  on  land.  In  a  battle,  a  revolution  or  riot,  the  promptness  of  a 
decision  is  often  more  important  than  the  decision  itself.  Victory 
may  result  from  going  to  the  left  or  to  the  right.  It  may  in  fact  be 
attained  equally  by  either  route.  But  it  seldom  results  from  a  mere 
inability  to  decide  upon  one  or  the  other.  Nor  is  this  consideration 
paramount  only  on  the  battlefield.  The  reasoning  which  induces  us 
to  place  one  general  in  command  of  an  army  will  equally  lead  us  to 
place  one  headmaster  in  charge  of  a  school,  one  leader  in  charge  of  an 
alpine  expedition,  one  producer  in  charge  of  a  play,  one  surgeon  in 
charge  of  an  operation,  one  physicist  in  control  of  a  nuclear  physics 


288  THE    EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

laboratory  or  one  Commissioner  in  charge  of  the  Metropohtan 
Police.  We  entrust  a  certain  kind  of  responsibility  to  an  individual, 
not  primarily  because  he  is  outstanding  but  simply  because  he  is 
singular.  Granted  the  wisdom  of  this  practice,  the  question  rises  as 
to  where  it  should  begin  and  end.  The  office  of  dictator  was  a  Roman 
expedient  to  deal  with  a  crisis  in  public  affairs.  But  such  a  crisis,  with 
prompt  decisions  needed  the  whole  time,  may  last  for  years.  A  state 
may  be  so  situated,  in  fact,  as  to  be  in  a  perpetual  state  of  crisis. 
Are  there  not  states  then  so  situated,  at  least  at  a  certain  period,  in 
which  a  dictatorship  is  advisable — or  even  essential? 

Here  then  are  the  three  chief  arguments  for  dictatorship  in  general, 
based  respectively  upon  the  use  to  be  made  of  genius,  the  unity  of 
conception  required  to  produce  a  work  of  art  and  the  need  for  a 
single  chief  if  quick  decisions  are  to  be  made.  Such  arguments  have 
been  used  to  justify  any  dictatorship  at  any  period  of  history.  But  the 
present  century  has  certain  technical  features  which,  while  lending 
additional  point  to  the  arguments  previously  used,  amount  to  a  new 
argument  in  themselves  and  one  apphcable  to  the  present  time.  The  first 
feature  to  observe  concerns  the  art  of  war.  We  have  all  read  history 
books  which  emphasise  the  changes  in  the  art  of  war  which  accom- 
panied the  Renaissance.  Firearms,  we  were  told,  made  the  armoured 
knight  obsolete.  He  became  vulnerable  to  a  hand-gun  which  the  mere 
serf  could  fire.  His  castle  became  vulnerable  to  cannon.  And  so 
political  power  tended  to  pass  from  the  nobility  to  the  king;  and  also, 
in  some  degree,  to  the  peasantry.  Feudalism,  we  were  taught  to  infer, 
was  finished.  Not  all  the  facts  cited  in  support  of  this  theory  are 
strictly  accurate  but  there  is  probably  something  in  the  theory.  What 
is  less  frequently  remarked  is  the  way  in  which  the  whole  tendency 
has  now  been  reversed.  The  great  period  of  democracy  in  Europe  was 
in  fact  the  period  of  massed  infantry,  with  God  tending  to  favour  the 
big  battalions.  The  War  of  1870  was  mainly  fought  with  rifle  and 
bayonet  and  the  First  World  War  was  not  dissimilar  in  that  respect 
until  its  close.  Since  1917  the  infantry  mass,  the  conscript  army,  has 
given  place  to  the  armoured  column  and  the  defended  locality.  So 
far  as  the  social  implications  of  war  are  concerned,  the  conditions 
to-day  are  more  nearly  medieval.  The  armoured  knight  is  in  the  field 
again  with  his  team  of  assistants.  It  is  true  that  it  takes  the  efforts 
of  an  entire  community  to  maintain  him  there,  but  this  was  equally  true 
in  the  Middle  Ages,  when  the  Feudal  system  was  in  fact  the  organiza- 
tion through  which  this  was  done.  It  may  be  thought  premature  to 
forecast  what  the  political  results  of  this  change  may  be.  We  can  at 
least  note,  however,  that  conscript  armies  and  massed  voting  went 
out  of  fashion  at  about  the  same  time. 

Just  as  the  new  techniques  of  industry  weaken  the  general  position 


DICTATORSHIP     IN     DECAY  289 

of  the  workers  in  the  productive  process  as  a  whole,  so  do  the  new 
techniques  of  warfare  weaken  the  potential  position  of  the  workers  in 
a  revolutionary  crisis.  Street  barricades  and  pikestaffs,  even  plus 
muskets,  are  not  enough  against  tanks  and  bombers.' 

Parallel  with  changes  in  the  art  of  war  have  been  the  technical 
changes  in  the  art  of  peace.  Some  of  these  have  been  summarised  in  a 
study  made  of  the  Managerial  Revolution  by  James  Burnham,  from 
which  the  above  passage  is  quoted.  He  points  out  that  the  social 
position  of  the  working  class  has  deteriorated  sharply  of  recent  years. 
The  skilled  worker  has  been  largely  superseded  by  the  classes  above 
and  below  him;  that  is,  by  the  experts  in  engineering  and  production 
planning  (who  are  highly  specialised  and  elaborately  trained)  and  by 
the  packers  and  sorters  and  fasteners  (who  are  hardly  trained  at  all). 
Skilled  workers  of  the  old  trade-union  type  are  at  once  less  important 
and  less  numerous.  They  could  not,  by  themselves,  run  the  motor- 
car factory.  It  is  doubtful  whether  they  could  produce  a  single  car. 
They  no  more  ask  a  share  in  the  management  than  do  the  share- 
holders. In  so  far  as  democratic  Parliaments  have  represented  capital 
and  labour,  Burnham  accounts  for  their  decline  in  usefulness  by  ex- 
plaining that  neither  capital  nor  labour  is  now  as  important  as 
management  and  that  managers  and  experts  do  not  work  through 
parliament  at  all.  The  decisions  that  matter  are  taken  in  the  United 
States  by  bodies  like  the  T.V.A.  and  in  Russia  by  the  Four  Year  Plan 
Commission.  Parliaments  have  not  been  abolished  so  much  as  quietly 
by-passed  by  people  whose  time  is  too  valuable  to  waste  in  that  sort 
of  debate.'^  These  technological  changes  are  fairly  consistent  with 
dictatorship  of  the  right  kind.  They  are  not  at  all  consistent  with 
rhetoric  about  self-evident  truths  or  the  sacred  mission  of  the 
proletariat.  The  time  for  politics,  in  that  sense,  has  passed. 

Comparable  in  importance  to  the  production  expert  is  the  psy- 
chologist. Critics  of  the  positive  achievements  of  psychology  have 
often  failed  to  notice  its  negative  eflfects.  It  was  relatively  easy  for  a 
politician  of  the  mid-nineteenth-century — the  Marxist  period,  as  we 
may  call  it — to  count  the  votes  and  announce  the  Will  of  the  People. 
It  seemed  relatively  easy  in  Victorian  England  to  discover  whether 
the  voters  wanted  Disraeli  or  Gladstone.  But  the  whole  democratic 
theory  has  been  undermined  by  the  psychologist  with  a  process  which 
began  to  attract  public  attention  in  about  1920.'^  It  may  have  begun 
with  intelligent  people  looking  back  upon  the  part  they  and  others 
had  played  in  the  war  mania  of  1914-18.  It  took  the  form  of  a  serious 

'  The  Managerial  Revolution.  James  Burnham.  London,  1942.  p.  50. 

-  See  Burnham.  op.  cit.  p.  138. 

^  See  The  group  mind.  W.  McDougall.  Cambridge,  1920.  Instinct  and  the  unconscious. 
W.  H.  R.  Rivers.  Cambridge,  1920.  Instincts  of  the  herd  in  peace  and  war.  W.  Trotter. 
London,  1920  and  Decline  of  the  West.  O.  Spengler.  New  York,  1926. 


290  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

attempt  to  determine  why  people  think,  vote  and  react  as  they  do. 
The  results  could  not  be  otherwise  than  profoundly  disturbing  to  a 
believer  in  democracy.  For  one  thing,  it  appeared  that  the  views  of  a 
person  as  an  individual  are  often  quite  different  from  his  or  her  views 
as  one  of  a  crowd.  Freud  and  McDougall  pointed  this  out  and  even 
tried  to  decide  between  the  merits  of  the  two  opinions  the  same 
individual  might  express.  Such  an  inquiry  has  its  interest  but  is  not 
our  present  concern.  The  important  fact,  politically,  is  that  the 
difference  exists.^  Research  also  reveals  that 

...  in  a  group  of  three,  one  person  who  knows  his  mind  will  obtain  a 
majority  vote  in  three  times  out  of  four  provided  that  the  other  two 
members  vote  at  random.  About  the  same  degree  of  control  can  be 
exercised  by  a  bloc  vote  of  3  over  an  indifferent  population  of  20.- 

It  is  true  that  the  word  'indifferent'  limits  the  influence  of  the  few 
to  matters  on  which  the  majority  have  no  decided  views.  But  other 
investigations  show  that  the  views  fervently  held  by  the  majority  are 
susceptible  to  mental  disturbances,  mass  hypnotism  and  panic. 
Research  by  mass  observation  showed  that  the  British  public  com- 
pletely reversed  its  opinion  about  conscription  during  ten  days  in 
1939.  Between  the  21st  and  26th  April,  fifty-three  per  cent  of  those 
questioned  thought  that  voluntary  recruitment  was  preferable, 
thirty-nine  per  cent  wanted  compulsion,  eight  per  cent  expressed  no 
opinion.  Conscription  was  approved  in  the  House  of  Commons  on 
27th  April.  Between  the  2nd  and  5th  May  it  was  found  that,  of  those 
questioned,  fifty-eight  per  cent  were  in  favour  of  conscription, 
thirty-eight  per  cent  opposed  to  it  and  four  per  cent  were  still  at  a 
loss.  Nothing  had  happened  in  the  meanwhile  to  justify  this  sudden 
change  of  attitude.  Some  fifteen  per  cent  of  the  people  had  changed 
their  minds  and  four  per  cent  previously  without  an  opinion  found 
that  they  had  acquired  one.^  Doris  Langley  Moore  concludes  that  'As 
a  matter  of  deplorable  truth,  multitudes  of  people  do  not  know  what 
they  want.  .  .  .'  In  the  light  of  this  sort  of  evidence,  talk  about  the  Will 
of  the  People  loses  much  of  its  force.  The  trained  investigator  is  apt 
to  ask  what  sort  of  will  is  to  be  considered  sacred— the  views  of 
individuals,  the  views  of  the  same  individuals  when  herded  together, 
the  views  of  the  herd  on  Tuesday  or  the  views  of  the  herd  on  Sunday 
afternoon?  The  suspicion  is  bound  to  dawn  that  the  minority  of 
people  who  reply  'Don't  know'  are  merely  more  honest  than  the  rest. 

Contemporary  with  the  advance  of  psychology  (and  closely 
connected  with  it)  was  the  development  of  commercial  advertising. 

1  On  the  objective  study  of  crowd  behaviour.  L.  S.  Penrose.  London,  1952.  pp.  2-5. 
"  Ibid.  p.  6. 

'  The  Vulgar  Heart:  An  Enquiry  into  the  Sentimental  Tendencies  of  Public  Opinion. 
D.  L.  Moore.  London,  1945.  See  pp.  54-55. 


DICTATORSHIP     IN     DECAY  291 

It  became  daily  more  apparent,  between  the  two  World  Wars,  that 
goods  do  not,  of  necessity,  sell  on  their  merits  but  through  a  process 
of  almost  hypnotic  suggestion.  This  has  always  been  partly  true  but 
it  remained  for  the  modern  expert  to  make  the  process  of  suggestion 
a  science.  Sales  were  found  to  depend  upon  an  adroit  combination  of 
colour,  form,  visual  suggestion  and  the  written  word.  Cunning 
appeals  were  directed  to  the  basic  instincts  of  hunger,  thirst,  fear  and 
sex.  Results  were  plotted  and  graphs  were  drawn,  the  more  cynical 
finally  concluding  that  the  usefulness  (if  any)  of  the  thing  to  be  sold 
was  irrelevant  to  the  success  of  the  campaign.  Experience  in  advertis- 
ing went  further  to  undermine  the  liberal  idea  of  democracy.  For  if 
the  people  could  be  coaxed  into  buying  the  worse — and  even  the  more 
expensive — of  two  rival  products,  it  was  manifest  that  they  could  be 
coaxed  by  the  same  means  into  voting  for  the  worse  of  two  rival 
candidates  for  office.  It  was  also  increasingly  evident  that  the  man 
already  in  office — and  more  especially  the  dictator — could  use  the 
considerable  resources  of  government  (schools,  newspapers,  posters, 
leaflets,  films  and  radio)  to  retain  the  confidence  which  he  possibly 
deserved  to  forfeit.  Examples  multiplied  of  this  being  done. 

Faced  with  this  evidence,  the  democrat  will  maintain  that  the  real 
will  of  the  people  can  be  ascertained  and  that  the  common  sense  of 
the  electorate  will  assert  itself  in  the  end.  But  the  deathblow  to  this 
theory  comes  from  the  accounts  received  of  witch-hunts  and  treason 
trials.  We  are  by  now  familiar  with  the  spectacle  of  accused  persons 
entering  the  witness  box  in  totalitarian  courts  and  calmly  confessing 
to  the  treason  which  will  ensure  their  condemnation.  We  are  told 
that  such  confessions  are  extorted  by  fear,  as  would  indeed  seem  most 
probable.  What  is  significant,  however,  is  that  the  psychological 
treatment  used  has  actually,  in  many  instances,  convinced  the 
victim  of  his  own  guilt.  He  will  tell  a  detailed  and  circumstantial 
story,  describing  events  which  never  happened  and  naming  accom- 
plices of  whom  he  had  never  previously  heard.  Persons  accused  of 
witchcraft  in  the  seventeenth  century  seem  to  have  done  the  same. 
Victims  of  this  sort  of  treatment  are  not  giving  evidence  under  duress. 
They  believe  what  they  are  saying.  They  are  instances  (in  an  extreme 
form)  of  the  success  attributable  to  methods  of  suggestion.  But 
milder  methods  produce  results  almost  as  striking.  The  child  enrolled 
in  the  Hitler  Youth  ends  with  a  mind  so  filled  with  legend  as  to  be 
unreceptive  of  fact.  The  American  voter  is  so  conditioned  by  propa- 
ganda about  communism  that  he  will  refuse  to  recognise  the  existence 
of  China.  The  British  voter  is  so  conditioned  by  propaganda  about 
Parliament  that  he  thinks  the  party  system  is  inevitable.  The  British 
housewife  has  been  so  conditioned  by  advertisement  that  she  will 
buy  the  worse  instead  of  the  better  product.  At  what  point  in  this 


292  THE    EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL    THOUGHT 

series  does  suggestion  end?  At  what  point  does  free  will  begin?  There 
is  no  possible  answer.  The  study  of  the  art  of  suggestion  has  made 
nonsense  of  democratic  theory.  It  has  also  provided  the  dictator  with 
a  technique,  not  of  oppression  but  of  gaining  a  continued  and  willing 
assent  to  his  rule. 

So  far  we  have  been  considering  the  theory  of  dictatorship  and  the 
means  by  which  twentieth  century  dictatorship  has  been  sustained. 
It  might  well  be  asked  what  this  has  to  do  with  dictatorship  in  decay. 
The  answer  is  that  its  merits  and  defects  are  the  same,  its  success  and 
decay  simultaneous.  The  dictator  rules,  as  we  have  seen,  by  virtue  of 
his  inspiration,  by  virtue  of  his  artistry  and  by  virtue  of  his  ability  to 
make  firm  and  rapid  decisions.  He  rules  in  this  century,  moreover, 
in  a  world  unsuitable  for  democracy  and  at  least  technically  favour- 
able for  dictatorship.  But  dictatorship  soon  becomes  decadent.  That 
feeling  of  inspired  genius  by  which  the  dictator  is  at  first  sustained,  and 
for  which  he  is  admired,  makes  him  impatient  of  contradiction.  He 
will  have  no  one  near  him  of  comparable  ability.  He  demands 
obedience  and  resents  opposition.  How  must  he  regard  those  who 
criticise  the  plans  of  the  destined  leader?  They  are  stupid.  Worse, 
they  are  disloyal.  As  Hitler  himself  observed: 

.  .  .  the  majority  can  never  replace  the  man.  The  majority  represents 
not  only  ignorance  but  also  cowardice.  And  just  as  a  hundred  block- 
heads do  not  equal  one  man  of  wisdom,  so  a  hundred  poltroons  are 
incapable  of  any  political  line  of  action  that  requires  moral  strength 
and  fortitude.^ 

So  a  dictator  will  tend  to  surround  himself  with  men  less  able  than 
himself — with  men  beside  whom  he  cannot  be  made  to  look  small — 
with  men  unlikely  to  have  views  of  their  own.  He  wants  obedience, 
help,  sympathy  and  admiration.  He  does  not  want  to  be  told  that  his 
facts  are  wrong  or  his  policy  mistaken. 

As  an  artist  he  is  even  less  patient  of  criticism.  The  whole  point  in 
appointing  one  supreme  planner  is  to  ensure  the  unified  conception 
of  the  plan.  But  what  will  become  of  the  central  theme  if  there  are  to 
be  niggling  amendments  by  ignorant  busybodies — by  people  too 
small  to  appreciate  the  grand  outline  of  the  master  plan?  The  sense 
of  purpose  will  be  lost.  Sweeping  lines  and  generalisations  will 
become  blurred  and  indistinct.  Rules  will  be  loaded  with  exceptions. 
Better  to  ignore  all  paltry  objections  and  keep  the  main  object  in 
view!  The  same  reasoning  applies  to  the  leader's  swift  and  final 
ruling.  This  becomes  far  more  difficult  if  advisers  are  going  to  talk 
over  every  issue.  It  becomes  a  question  indeed  whether  the  adviser 
who  emphasises  imaginary  obstacles  can  be  whole-heartedly  behind 
the  national  effort.  Is  it  not  more  probable  that  he  wishes  that  eff'ort 

'  Hitler,  op.  dt.  p.  81. 


DICTATORSHIP     IN     DECAY  293 

to  fail?  Has  he  not,  for  that  matter,  been  bribed  by  the  other  side? 
What  is  needed  is,  first  and  foremost,  loyalty.  So  the  leader  must  be 
surrounded  by  the  loyal,  the  steadfast,  the  reliable;  not  men  who 
make  difficulties  but  those  who  suggest  expedients.  To  put  the  case 
more  briefly,  only  the  second-rate  are  wanted,  and  those  only  while 
they  remain  consistently  acquiescent.  If  brilliance  is  wanted  at  all, 
it  will  be  on  the  advertising  side,  in  explaining  the  orthodox  view  to 
the  people,  or  perhaps  to  other  countries. 

The  dictator  who  assumes  responsibility  for  all  major  decisions, 
surrounding  himself  with  mediocrities  so  as  to  be  unrivalled  and  un- 
opposed, must  live  under  an  appalling  strain.  He  is  as  subject  as  other 
people  to  illness  and  overwork.  To  normal  ailments  he  must  add  the 
strain  of  public  life  and  the  fear  of  assassination.  To  relax  for  more 
than  a  short  time  would  be  to  admit  that  others  can  govern  as  well  as 
he — an  impossible  admission  for  one  who  claims  to  be  unique.  Even 
if  he  does  not  fall  sick,  he  will  grow  old.  As  time  goes  on,  inspiration 
will  fail.  Large  scale  and  long-term  plans  will  have  less  attraction  for 
a  man  who  no  longer  expects  to  see  them  fulfilled.  The  dictator  will 
begin  to  suspect  that  his  decisions  will  be  reversed  as  soon  as  he  dies. 
Fatigue  sets  in  and  he  is  no  longer  able  to  decide  instantly  upon  a 
policy.  He  is  no  longer  the  man  he  was.  He  sees  this  fact  reflected  in 
the  faces  of  his  staff".  Are  they  (or  is  this  imagination?)  exchanging 
significant  looks  behind  his  back?  Do  they  dare  to  think  that  he,  the 
Leader,  is  losing  grip?  This  is  the  point  at  which  dictatorship  begins 
to  suffer  from  the  disease  which  earlier  proved  helpful.  The  legend, 
the  myth  begins  to  react  on  its  inventor.  No  one  dare^  to  tell  the 
Leader  what  is  actually  happening.  Sober  facts  he  will  regard  as 
pessimism;  and  pessimism  as  disloyalty.  So  bad  news  comes  to  be 
increasingly  hidden  from  him.  Worse  still,  he  comes  to  believe  his 
own  propaganda.  The  deceiver  of  others  ends  even  by  deceiving  him- 
self. He  lives  finally  in  a  world  of  unreality,  in  a  world  of  his  own 
imagining.  From  then  he  can  be  regarded  as  practically  insane. 

The  life  of  Adolf  Hitler  off'ers,  not  the  only  example  of  this  tendency 
but  the  example  of  which  we  have  the  fullest  data.  Mein  Kanipf  is 
the  work  of  a  sane  man,  unbalanced  in  some  of  his  hatreds  but 
realistic  in  judging  what  could  and  could  not  be  done.  Sane  he  re- 
mained for  many  years,  revealing  a  remarkable  flair  for  politics  and 
even  for  strategy.  'He  was  a  systematic  thinker''  says  one  historian. 
'Never'  says  another  'was  Hitler's  ability  more  clearly  shown  than 
in  the  way  he  recovered  from  this  set-back'  [i.e.  of  9th  November, 
1923].  It  was  in  these  words  that  Hitler  addressed  the  court  which 
tried  him: — 

The  man  who  is  born  to  be  a  dictator  is  not  compelled;  he  wills  it. 

'  Hitler's  Table  Talk.  1941-44.  Ed.  by  H.  R.  Trevor-Roper.  London,  1953.  p.  viii. 


294  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

He  is  not  driven  forward,  but  drives  himself.  There  is  nothing  im- 
modest about  this.  Is  it  immodest  for  a  worker  to  drive  himself  towards 
heavy  labour?  Is  it  presumptuous  of  a  man  with  the  high  forehead  of  a 
thinker  to  ponder  through  the  nights  till  he  gives  the  world  an  in- 
vention? The  man  who  feels  called  upon  to  govern  a  people  has  no 
right  to  say:  If  you  want  me  or  summon  me,  I  will  co-operate.  No,  it 
is  his  duty  to  step  forward.^ 

These  are  the  words  of  a  remarkable  man,  a  man  of  intellect  and 
vision.  Nor  is  the  man  described  by  Rauschning  in  1932-33  other  than 
sane.  As  the  war  approached,  however,  and  after  it  had  begun, 
Hitler  began  to  assume  heavier  and  heavier  responsibilities,  trusting 
nobody.  He  made  himself  Minister  for  War  in  1938.  In  1941  he 
assumed  the  command  of  the  army  (O.K.H.)  in  addition  to  the 
command  of  the  armed  forces  as  a  whole  (O.K.W.).  In  January,  1942, 
he  could  speak  of  his  'unbounded  confidence,  confidence  in  myself, 
so  that  nothing,  whatever  it  may  be,  can  throw  me  out  of  the  saddle, 
so  that  nothing  can  shake  me'.'-  That  represented  the  high-water  mark 
of  his  belief  in  himself  and  his  destiny.  Three  months  later,  in  March, 
his  hair  was  grey  and  he  had  fits  of  giddiness.  He  had  by  then  con- 
vinced himself  that  he  had  saved  the  situation  by  superseding  his 
Army  High  Command.  He  drew  up  his  plans  for  victory  over  Russia 
in  1942.  Haider,  who  warned  him  of  the  Russian  strength,  was 
shouted  down.''  Hitler  quoted  Nietzche  and  Clausewitz  and  removed 
the  generals  who  disagreed  with  him.  Goebbels  wrote  that  'As  long 
as  he  lives  and  is  among  us  in  good  health,  as  long  as  he  can  give  us 
the  strength  of  his  spirit,  no  evil  can  touch  us'.*  Hitler  now  demanded 
and  was  given  by  law  still  further  and  more  absolute  powers.  He 
personally  directed  the  drive  of  1942  against  Stalingrad  and  towards 
the  Caucasus  and  it  is  generally  recognised  that  he  could  have  gained 
either  objective  if  he  would  only  have  restricted  himself  to  the  one. 
It  was  a  major  strategic  error,  made  worse  by  Hitler's  refusal  to 
believe  his  own  intelligence  reports. 

When  a  statement  was  read  to  him  which  showed  that  Stalin  would 
still  be  able  to  muster  another  one  to  one  and  a  quarter  million  men  in 
the  region  north  of  Stalingrad  (besides  half  a  million  more  in  the 
Caucasus),  and  which  proved  that  the  Russian  output  of  first-line  tanks 
amounted  to  twelve  hundred  a  month.  Hitler  flew  at  the  man  who  was 
reading  with  clenched  fists  and  foam  in  the  corners  of  his  mouth,  and 
forbade  him  to  read  such  idiotic  twaddle.^ 

By  November,  1942,  Hitler  had  sustained  a  definite  and  large- 
scale  defeat. 

'  Hitler,  a  Study  in  Tyrannv.  Alan  Bullock.  London,  1952.  p.  106. 

'Ibid.p.G\4. 

'  /hid.  pp.  616-617. 

'  Ibid.  p.  617. 

■  Ibid.  p.  628. 


DICTATORSHIP     IN     DECAY  295 

In  the  course  of  1943  Hitler,  who  looked  fifteen  years  older  (accord- 
ing to  Goering)  since  the  war  began,  experienced  a  trembling  of  his 
left  arm  and  left  leg.  He  was  taking  drugs  constantly  and  receiving 
daily  injections.  By  the  winter  of  1944-45  he  was  meeting  all  oppo- 
sition or  warning  with  hysterical  outbursts  of  rage.  'He  had',  says 
Guderian,  'a  special  picture  of  the  world,  and  every  fact  had  to  be 
fitted  into  that  fancied  picture.  As  he  believed,  so  the  world  must 
be.  .  .  .'^  By  February,  1945,  he  was  a  physical  wreck,  an  old  man  with 
grey  skin,  shuffling  walk,  trembling  down  the  left  side,  totally 
exhausted  and  yet  ready  to  scream  with  rage  when  even  momentarily 
opposed.  This  was  the  Hitler  so  well  described  by  Trevor-Roper:- 

So  Hitler  ordered;  but  his  orders  bore  no  relation  now  to  any 
reality.  He  was  moving  imaginary  battalions,  making  academic  plans, 
disposing  non-existent  formations.  The  Steiner  attack  was  the  last, 
most  symbolic  instance  of  Hitler's  personal  strategy;  it  never  took 
place. 

This  cloud-cuckoo-land  operation  took  its  imaginary  course  in 
April,  1945.  Berlin  was  by  then  partly  in  Russian  hands.  Hitler 
shrieked  at  Gottlieb  Berger  'Everyone  has  deceived  me!  no  one  has 
told  me  the  truth!  the  armed  forces  have  lied  to  me!'  All  this  was 
strictly  accurate.  Night  was  Falling  on  the  Gods.  There  was  no 
alternative  to  suicide  and  Hitler  duly  shot  himself  on  30th  April.  He 
was  already  senile  although  only  just  fifty-six  years  old.  His  forces 
surrendered  on  May  4th  and  Alan  Bullock  remarks  that  'The  Third 
Reich  outlasted  its  founder  by  just  one  week'.^ 

This  story  of  rapid  decay  is,  of  course,  complicated  by  circum- 
stances unconnected  with  Hitler's  moral  and  physical  collapse.  But 
it  is  tolerably  certain  that  the  Third  Reich  would  in  any  case  have 
died  with  him.  We  know,  however,  that  Hitler  at  one  time  (in  1942) 
visualised  having  a  regular  successor,  an  elected  chief  with  absolute 
authority,  chosen  by  a  Senate  meeting  in  secret  conclave. 

Although  a  State  founded  on  such  principles  can  lay  no  claim  to 
eternity,  it  might  last  for  eight  to  nine  centuries.  The  thousand-year- 
old  organization  of  the  Church  is  a  proof  of  this — and  yet  this  entire 
organization  is  founded  on  nonsense.  What  I  have  said  should  a 
fortiori  be  true  of  an  organization  founded  on  reason.* 

This  suggested  period  of  eight  or  nine  centuries  proved  to  be  an 
overestimate.  It  did  not  last  eight  or  nine  days.  Nor,  in  more  favour- 
able circumstances,  could  it  have  lasted  very  much  longer.  There 
was  no  possible  successor,  as  Hitler  himself  had  realised: 

'  Bullock,  op.  cit.  p.  701. 

=  The  Last  Days  of  Hitler.  H.  R.  Trevor-Roper.  London,  1952.  p.  123. 

=  Bullock,  op.  cit.  p.  732. 

'  Hitler's  Table  Talk.  H.  R.  Trevor-Roper.  London,  1953.  p.  389. 


296  THE    EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

...  If  anything  happens  to  me  Germany  will  be  left  without  a  leader. 
1  have  no  successor.  The  first,  Hess,  is  mad;  the  second,  Goering,  has 
lost  the  sympathy  of  the  people,  and  the  third,  Himmler,  would  be 
rejected  by  the  Party. ^ 

The  historian,  while  accepting  Hitler's  verdict  on  these  three,  must 
be  more  impressed  with  the  fact  that  they  would  have  been  hopeless 
in  supreme  power  even  if  acceptable  to  the  rest.  Goering  had  run  to 
seed.  Himmler — 'Faithful  Heinrich' — was  a  stupid,  insignificant, 
pedantic  ex-Sergeant-Major,  naive  enough  to  believe  the  Nazi 
mythology.  Joseph  Goebbels,  ablest  of  the  Party,  was  no  leader.  In 
Albert  Speer  and  Hjalmar  Schacht,  Hitler  had  two  technicians  of 
genius  but  they  never  aspired  to  more  than  expert  knowledge  and 
Schacht  ended  in  prison.  Ribbentrop,  Rosenberg  and  Robert  Ley 
were  nonentities,  fit  members  of  what  Trevor-Roper  calls  'a  set  of 
flatulent  clowns'.  As  for  the  soldiers,  those  of  any  ability  were 
eliminated — Haider  (too  outspoken)  being  told  to  commit  suicide  in 
1944.  Those  that  remained — Keitel,  Jodl,  Burgdorf  and  the  rest — 
were  mainly  remarkable  for  their  subservience  to  Hitler,  who  rejected 
them  all  (in  his  last  days)  in  making  Doenitz  his  successor.  The  fact 
that  Hitler  ended  with  a  circle  of  second-rate  sycophants  about  him 
was,  of  course,  no  coincidence  but  the  logical  consequence  of  dictator- 
ship. A  Leader  who  wishes  to  appear  supreme  and  unrivalled  in 
policy,  strategy,  tactics,  finance,  architecture,  planning  and  ideas, 
cannot  afford  to  employ  assistants  who  rise  above  mediocrity,  least 
of  all  as  generals.  But  what  success  can  the  forces  achieve  if  all  the 
best  commanders  are  systematically  murdered  or  dismissed?  Dic- 
tatorship decays  by  the  laws  which  govern  its  very  nature.  It  could  not 
last  for  more  than  a  lifetime  in  any  case.  In  practice  it  may  not  last  as 
long.  The  dictator  believes  in  his  own  genius — how  otherwise  could 
he  have  seized  power? — so  he  resents  opposition.  He  believes  in  his 
own  vision  of  the  State — so  he  will  listen  to  no  advice.  He  believes  in 
the  need  for  centralised  authority — so  he  will  delegate  no  power  to 
others.  The  natural  results  are  that  he  is  surrounded  by  flattering 
nonentities;  that  he  is  never  told  the  truth;  and  that  he  is  driven  mad 
by  overwork.  He  is  apt  to  end  as  a  physical  wreck,  unable  even  to 
make  the  decisions  which  no  one  else  is  allowed  to  make  for  him. 


'  Bullock,  op.  cit.  p.  705. 


CHAPTER    XXIV 

Bonapartism 


THE  Collapse  of  dictatorship  owing  to  the  disability,  defeat  or 
death  of  the  dictator  is  unlikely  to  prelude  a  more  than  momen- 
tary return  to  democracy  or  oligarchy.  Much  depends,  it  is  true,  upon 
the  length  of  time  which  has  elapsed  since  the  dictator  first  came  to 
power.  Ordinarily  speaking,  however,  the  tendency  will  be  for  the 
people  to  have  forgotten  how  to  govern  themselves.  Democratic 
politicians,  often  elderly  men,  may  well  die  off — even  in  the  course 
of  nature — during  a  dictatorship,  leaving  no  one  available  with  any 
experience  of  power.  The  dictator's  own  followers,  should  they 
survive,  will  usually  turn  out  to  be  nonentities.  Members  of  any 
previous  aristocracy  will  have  nothing  left  but  vague  pretensions  and 
hatreds.  Even  the  middle-class  may  have  lost,  during  previous 
revolutions,  any  claim  to  leadership  it  could  ever  boast.  The  dictator's 
fall  will  leave  a  vacancy  which  might  seem,  at  first  sight,  ready  for  the 
next  dictator  to  fill.  But  that  solution  often  proves  impracticable,  at 
any  rate  in  the  first  instance.  For  the  previous  dictator  will  normally 
have  seen  to  it  that  he  should  have  no  obvious  successor.  He  will 
have  killed  all  possible  rivals.  If  there  is  to  be  another  dictatorship  it 
will  be  the  result  of  further  bloodshed;  for  it  is  only  in  the  course  of 
fighting  that  a  new  leader  is  likely  to  emerge.  As  against  this,  the  fall 
of  the  inspired  Leader  does  not  always  leave  the  people  in  the  mood 
for  war.  Of  war  they  have,  not  infrequently,  had  enough. 

So  the  end  of  a  period  of  dictatorship  may  often  predispose  a 
people  towards  monarchy ;  which  is  indeed,  probably,  the  form  of  rule 
appropriate  for  them.  Kingship  may  off"er  them  stability  without 
demanding  from  them  the  civic  virtues  which  they  simply  do  not 
possess.  Kingship  is  the  natural  aftermath  to  a  Caesar,  a  Cromwell  or 
a  Napoleon.  But  much  depends  upon  the  circumstances.  When  there 
is  a  recent  tradition  of  monarchy,  the  throne  is  there  to  fill.  When, 
however,  the  tradition  has  been  broken,  there  may  be  a  tendency  to 
give  royal  honours  to  the  dictator's  heir.  It  is  this  rather  odd  prefer- 
ence which  accounts,  in  part,  for  the  restoration  of  Napoleon  III  and 
even  for  the  brief  rule  of  Richard  Cromwell.  Bonapartism  is  thus  the 
name  given  in  France  to  the  cult  of  those  who  demand  the  restoration 
of  the  empire,  not  in  the  name  of  De  Gaulle  but  for  the  benefit  of 
Napoleon's  collateral  descendants.  One  would  have  thought  that 

297 


298  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

believers  in  the  principle  of  inspired  leadership  would  have  sought  to 
instal  a  soldier  (if  one  could  be  found)  of  comparable  talent.  One 
would  have  thought  that  believers  in  hereditary  succession  would 
have  demanded,  as  some  indeed  do,  the  restoration  of  the  ancient 
kingship.  It  is  an  odd  confusion  of  ideas  which  can  favour  an 
hereditary  line  of  inspired  leaders;  although  no  more  odd  perhaps 
than  the  British  trust  in  hereditary  champions  of  egalitarian  democ- 
racy. This,  however,  is  the  basis  of  Bonapartism;  a  term  we  may  use 
to  define  the  attempt  made  to  restore  monarchy  after  a  period  of 
dictatorship  but  without  reinstating  the  previous  royal  house.  It 
involves  founding  an  entirely  new  dynasty. 

The  history  of  China  provides  us  with  many  good  examples  of  this 
development.  Chinese  dynasties  lasted  for  about  two  and  a  half 
centuries  each,  on  an  average,  their  period  of  decline  representing  a 
phase  of  oligarchy  or  democracy,  half  concealed  by  the  observance  of 
kingly  ritual.  The  dictators  who  secured  imperial  office  were  of 
varied  origin.  Liu  Chi  (or  Pang),  who  became  emperor  in  202  B.C. 
was  a  commoner  of  officer  rank.  Wu-ti  was  succeeded  by  the  nephew 
of  the  late  Empress.  From  the  disorder  which  followed  the  socialistic 
experiments  of  Wang  Mang  there  emerged,  as  supreme,  a  distant 
cousin  of  the  former  Han  Emperor.  Li,  founder  of  the  T'ang  dynasty, 
who  succeeded  after  the  murder  of  Yang  Kuang,  was  of  a  ducal 
family.  Chao  K'wang-Yin,  regent  in  a.d.  959  and  emperor  in  960, 
was  of  similarly  respectable  origin.  Chu  Yuanchang,  on  the  other 
hand,  who  captured  Nanking  and  made  himself  emperor  in  1368, 
was  a  monk  of  humble  origin.  The  problem  for  the  Chinese  political 
theorist  was  therefore  to  find  justification  for  the  revolt  which  brought 
the  current  dynasty  into  power.  He  had  to  do  so,  moreover,  without 
lending  any  general  sanction  to  future  revolts  designed  to  expel  it. 
This  problem  was  solved  by  teaching  that  the  bad  emperor  was  not 
emperor  at  all  and  that  the  current  emperor  was  a  model  of  the 
virtues  which  his  predecessor  had  lacked. 

This  process  is  well  exemplified  in  the  revolution  which  established 
Chu  Yuanchang  as  first  emperor  of  the  Ming  dynasty.  Revolt  in  this 
instance  was  directed  against  the  Mongols  and  Chu  Yuanchang  was 
able  to  enlist  nationalist  feelings  on  his  side,  expressing  his  views  in 
a  manifesto  which  has  survived  and  which  reads: — 

We  Chinese  have  regarded  the  ruler  as  the  father  of  the  people,  the 
court  as  the  center  of  the  nation,  and  moral  principles  as  principles  of 
government.  The  conduct  of  the  Mongol  monarchs  violates  the 
Chinese  sense  of  morality  and  cannot  be  exemplary.  The  Mongol 
ministers  are  dictatorial,  the  Mongol  censors  arbitrary,  and  the 
Mongol  judges  prejudiced.  ...  It  is  said  that  'no  barbarians  ever  reign 
for   a   century'.  This  saying  must  come   true,   now  that  we  have 


BONAPARTISM  299 

started  a  nation-wide  revolution  to  overthrow  the  Mongol  regime.^ 

The  revolution  succeeded  and  had  the  effect  of  installing  as  dictator 
one  of  the  most  ignorant,  suspicious  and  brutal  characters  ever 
recorded  in  Chinese  history.  Chu  Yuanchang  followed  good  dicta- 
torial practice  in  executing  all  the  ministers  and  generals  who  had 
assisted  his  rise  to  power.  He  ruled  directly,  combining  the  offices  of 
emperor,  premier  and  commander-in-chief.  He  founded  a  new 
dynasty,  nevertheless,  one  which  lasted  until  1644.  There  followed  a 
period  of  disorder,  during  which  Li  Tse-Cheng  tried  to  make  himself 
emperor;  a  period  which  ended  with  the  establishment  of  the  Ch'ing 
dynasty  in  about  1659.  The  Ch'ing  or  Manchu  emperors  then  held 
sway  until  1911,  using  Chinese  terminology  to  justify  an  alien  rule. 

It  sounds  very  Confucian  and  Chinese  when  one  reads  the  Manchu 
proclamation  that  the  'wheel  of  tlie  world'  had  turned,  the  decline  of 
one  dynasty  had  made  room  for  another,  the  Ming  had  lost  the 
heavenly  mandate.  'Through  heaven's  favor  and  the  new  emperor's 
blessing'  the  Manchus  had  conquered  Peking.- 

It  is  this  phrase  'the  mandate  of  heaven'  which  is  of  particular 
significance. 

The  doctrine  of  the  mandate  of  heaven  was  a  feature  of  Chinese 
political  thought  from  an  early  period.  It  was  adopted  by  Tung 
Chung-shu  (circa  179-104  B.C.)  adviser  to  the  emperor  Wu  Ti,  who 
was  first  responsible  for  making  Confucian  ethics  the  basis  of  official 
teaching  and  the  key  to  public  office.  The  Confucian  ideal,  none  too 
precise  in  the  first  instance  and  afterwards  blended  with  concepts 
derived  in  fact  from  other  thinkers,  could  be  made  an  invaluable  ally 
of  those  actually  in  power.  Many  Confucian  ideas  have  no  immediate 
and  practical  application  but  some,  as  interpreted  by  Mencius  (and 
Tung  Chung-shu)  could  be  very  usefully  emphasised.  'God  creates 
the  people'  said  Mencius,  'and  appoints  for  them  emperors  and 
teachers'.^  'The  Master  said: —  "The  people  may  be  made  to  follow 
a  course,  but  not  to  understand  the  reason  why".'*  There  was  no 
nonsense  in  Confucian  theory  about  equality.  People  differed  from 
each  other  in  position,  wealth,  age,  wisdom  and  ability.  Some  were 
fitted  to  rule  and  others  fit  only  to  obey.  But  neither  was  fitness  to 
rule  a  matter  of  noble  descent.  How  could  it  be  in  a  land  where  the 
ruling  dynasty  had  gained  power  in  a  revolution  which  some  might 
remember  and  of  which  all  would  have  heard?  No  doctrine  will  do 

•  Men  and  Ideas.  An  Informal  History  of  Chinese  Political  Thought.  Lin  Moiishcng. 
New  York,  1942.  p.  131. 

"  The  Origin  of  Manchu  rule  in  China.  Frontier  and  Bureaucracy  as  Interacting  Forces 
in  the  Chinese  Empire.  Franz  Michael.  Baltimore,  1942.  p.  116. 

'  History  of  Chinese  Political  Thought  during  the  early  Tsin  Period.  Liang  Chi-Chao. 
Trans,  by  L.  T.  Chen.  London,  1930.  p.  50.  Liang  Chi-Chao  was  a  pupil  of  K'ang 
Yuwei,  last  of  the  Confucians. 

■*  Hsiintze,  Moulder  of  Confucianism.  H.  H.  Dubs.  London,  1927. 


300  THE     EVOLUTION     OF     POLITICAL     THOUGHT 

which  fails  to  show  that  the  last  revolution  was  in  accordance  with 
the  order  of  Heaven  and  in  response  to  the  wishes  of  men.  The 
previous  dynasty  must  have  lost  the  heavenly  mandate.  On  this  point 
Mencius  is  explicit. 

...  'In  order  to  be  a  king  one  must  fulfil  the  functions  of  a  king. 
When  a  king  fails  to  do  that,  he  loses  his  claim  to  be  the  ruler  of  the 
people'.  On  this  point  the  following  conversation  is  illuminating: 
"King  Hsuan  of  Chi  asked,  'Is  it  authentic  that  Tong  put  the  Emperor 
Chieh  in  exile,  and  that  King  Wu  led  the  expedition  against  the 
Emperor  Chow?'  Mencius  replied  'It  is  so  recorded  in  the  book'. 
'Is  it  permissible  then  for  a  minister  to  put  to  death  his  sovereign?' 
'One  who  outrages  the  virtue  'Jen'  is  a  robber;  one  who  outrages 
propriety  is  a  ruffian.  A  ruffian  or  a  robber  is  a  mere  commoner.  I  have 
heard  that  a  man  named  Chow  was  decapitated ;  but  I  have  never  heard 
that  a  sovereign  was  put  to  death". '^ 

Political  advisers  clearly  had  their  anxious  moments.  They  had 
somehow  to  combine  their  approval  of  past  revolution  with  an 
assurance  of  loyalty  in  the  event  of  any  future  revolt.  They  were  like 
early  Hanoverian  divines  preaching  the  doctrine  of  divine  right — 
those  who  gained  their  bishopric  had  earned  it.  But  the  Confucian 
doctrine  of  Names  evades  the  difficulty  rather  neatly.  The  king  who  is 
not  saintly  and  benevolent  is  not  king  at  all.  He  has  deposed  himself. 
He  has  virtually  abdicated.  It  was  the  usefulness  of  this,  among 
other  doctrines,  which  induced  Tung  Chung-shu  to  advise  Wu  Ti  to 
adopt  Confucianism  as  the  official  doctrine. 

Your  humble  servant  proposes  that  all  doctrines  that  deviate  from 
the  arts  and  classics  of  Confucius  be  suppressed  completely.  Once 
subversive  and  pernicious  doctrines  are  quelled,  the  unity  of  the 
Empire  may  be  maintained  and  laws  and  rules  may  be  so  clearly  stated 
that  the  people  will  know  what  to  follow.'^ 

Confucianism  provides,  or  can  be  distorted  to  provide,  a  valuable 
support  for  monarchy.  It  does  not,  however,  justify  a  despotic  rule. 
For  the  emperor  could  retain  the  mandate  of  heaven  only  by  display- 
ing, or  seeming  to  display,  the  virtues  which  such  a  mandate  would 
seem  to  imply.  The  ruler  was  considerably  fettered  by  the  etiquette 
and  conventions  which  surrounded  his  office.  It  was  no  part  of  the 
a